Staying awake, starting with Windows, tray and backups

A coding session can run for an hour while you do something else. If Windows goes to sleep in the middle, the session stops with it, and nothing tells you why. AigoPilot asks the computer to stay awake while sessions work, can start with Windows, and keeps working in the background when you close its window. This article covers those habits and where the studio keeps its data.

Keep the computer awake

While a session works, the studio asks the system not to sleep. On Windows this is an ordinary power request, the kind a video player makes, and it is dropped by itself if the studio's engine is gone. The screen may still turn off. By default, ten minutes after the last session goes quiet, the request is taken back.

Each computer has its own setting, so you can keep a Mac awake and let your laptop sleep.

1. Click the gear for Settings, then Computers.
2. Find the row of the computer. Tick Stays awake while a session works on it.
3. Under and for type how many minutes it should stay awake after the last work. The most it takes is 240.

The row does not appear for a computer that cannot be asked, or that is switched off. On a computer where only the agent runs, a session that waits for your answer also keeps it awake, because the answer can only come from afar. On the PC you sit at, a session that waits for you does not keep it up all night.

A Mac whose lid is closed goes to sleep anyway. No program can change that.

Close the window, keep working

Closing the AigoPilot window does not stop anything. The studio hides and stays beside the clock, and sessions that were running go on. Click the icon beside the clock to bring the window back, or right-click it for a menu with AigoPilot (open the window) and Quit.

Quitting ends the studio. If sessions are still working, it asks first, in a window named A session is still working:

• Go on in the background: the work continues and you see the same sessions next time you open the studio.
• Stop them all: every session is closed now. The conversations stay and can be continued later.

Quit is also at the bottom of Settings.

Start with Windows

The studio can start when you sign in, hidden beside the clock, so that waiting sessions go on being watched and your phone can always reach it. It uses your own Windows user's start-up list, and it needs no administrator.

Once a phone is paired, a tick box appears under Settings, Computers, in the part about phones: Start AigoPilot when this computer starts, so the phone always reaches it. The Advanced first-run setup asks the same question on its page about starting and staying in the background. The agent on another computer has its own tick, Start when I sign in to this computer, described in Setting up a second Windows PC.

Where the data is, and the backup

Everything the studio keeps is on your computer, in %APPDATA%\com.aigopilot.studio. The main file there is aigopilot.db. See Where your data lives and what leaves your computer for what that file holds.

When an update of the studio has to change the format of that file, the studio first copies the old file into a backups folder beside it, named aigopilot-v followed by the old version number and the date and time. This happens only before such a change, not at every start. The studio never reads these copies back by itself; they are there for you, or for support, if something goes wrong.

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