Definition
Plain language
The running text file that records everything an AI assistant did during a work session.
As stated in the literature
Append-only log written by the agent harness recording each model request, tool call, and result; the primary artifact used for post-hoc behavioral auditing, and typically writable by the agent itself.
Also called: session log, session logs, session files
Why it matters: It is usually the only record of what an AI actually did, so if it is incomplete or edited, after-the-fact review of the AI's behavior becomes guesswork.
For example, if you want to know why an assistant deleted a config file yesterday, the session file is where you'd find the exact command it ran and what it saw beforehand.
Heard on the show
“… somewhere the agent will read them — a poisoned document, a malicious tool output, a tampered session log — along with one sentence of behavioral-consistency pressure. …”Episode 044 — How One Sentence and a Forged History Flip the Most Aligned Models