Away mode

Away mode is one switch for leaving your chats running while you’re gone. Choose Away from the autopilot control, say for how many hours (1 to 24) and, if you like, give a goal such as “keep every open chat moving on its current task”. Press return to start.

While you’re away

• The conductor leads your chats. It sends each chat its next step, the same way it does when autopilot is on.
• Plainly safe steps are approved for you. Reading and editing files inside each chat’s own folder (outside .git), running its tests, type checks, lint and builds, and looking at git. Every other permission prompt waits for you as usual. Questions a chat asks you always wait.
• Stuck chats are brought back. A chat whose Claude Code stopped, whose turn failed, or that has shown no sign of life for a long time is restarted and told to continue, a few times at most. A chat that hits a usage limit moves to another of your own signed-in accounts if your policy allows it, or waits for the reset and carries on.
• A budget, if you set one. The away dialog shows the spending limit and how many new chats the conductor may open. Change both in Policy.

What it never does on its own

No setting switches these on while you’re away:

• pushing, deploying or deleting
• anything on the web, or on another machine
• MCP tools
• chained or redirected shell commands (the one exception: cd into the chat’s own folder, followed by commands that are each allowed on their own)

Coming back

When the time is up, or you say you’re back, everything switches off together, and the summary card shows the time away: what needs you first, most urgent at the top, then what is still running with its ETA, what finished, and what was approved or recovered for you, grouped by project. Each row opens its chat.

The card is also written every hour while you work. It’s put together from each chat’s existing brief, so writing it calls no model.

The policy and the log

The rules live in ~/.laika/away-policy.json, written the first time away mode starts. Its lists add to the safe defaults, and removed takes defaults out. Every decision the policy makes is appended to ~/.laika/away-log.jsonl, so you can read exactly what was approved and why.

To stop the conductor at once, press Shift⌥⌘A. It doesn’t ask for confirmation.