Managoat is the hosted Fountain. Fountain is the open-source engine, and its name is on the CLI, the API, the SDK and this manual. Everything here applies to Managoat unless a page says it is for a self-hosted server.

Conversation states

This page lists the status values a conversation takes, what exists in each one, and which operations are legal. Read About conversations for what a conversation is.

Transitions

pending ---> running <---> idle
   |            |            |
   |            v            |
   +--------> failed <-------+

any non-terminal state ---> terminated

idle returns to running when a follow-up prompt arrives. Each non-terminal state moves to terminated through POST /api/conversations/:id/terminate.

The states

Status	What exists	What you can do	Terminal
`pending`	The conversation row, and its resolved set of environment variables. No sandbox yet.	Terminate it.	No
`running`	A sandbox, and a turn in flight.	Interrupt the turn, stream events, terminate it.	No
`idle`	A sandbox, and no turn in flight. The sandbox can be live or suspended.	Send a follow-up prompt, stream events, terminate it.	No
`failed`	The transcript and the log events. Fountain can have destroyed the sandbox already.	Read the transcript. Launch a new conversation.	Yes
`terminated`	The transcript and the log events.	Read the transcript.	Yes

The sandbox is not the status

A conversation's status describes the run. It does not tell you whether a machine has power right now.

An idle conversation can have a live sandbox, a suspended one, or none at all. Which one depends on how long it has been idle, and on what the provider supports.

Sandbox event	Trigger	Effect on status	Agent memory
Suspend	Idle for `SANDBOX_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MINUTES`, 60 by default.	None. It stays `idle`.	Kept. The disk survives.
Wake	The next prompt.	`idle` to `running`.	Kept.
Wake without a prompt	`POST /api/conversations/{id}/wake`, or `fountain conv wake <id>`.	None. It stays `idle`.	Kept.
Destroy on ceiling	It ran for `SANDBOX_MAX_LIFETIME_HOURS`. Off by default, so this never happens unless you set it.	None. It stays resumable.	Lost for an ephemeral sandbox. Fountain parks a persistent home, which keeps it.
Destroy on idle	It went idle on a provider with no `:suspend` capability.	None.	Lost.

Wake a conversation ahead of its next prompt when that prompt should not wait for the sandbox: open it in an app, then send. The response is awake when the sandbox was already up and waking when the request started it. The wake runs after the response, so a wake that fails shows up on the event stream as a wake stage in the failed state. A sandbox that is gone is replaced, as a prompt would replace it, and a woken conversation is suspended again after the same idle period.

You set both bounds for each instance. A 0 turns either one off, and the ceiling starts off. Read the configuration reference.

Warnings

Do not expect to resume a conversation in failed or terminated. Launch a new one.

An interrupt applies to the turn in flight, and not to the conversation. The conversation returns to idle and stays usable.

Do not terminate a conversation you want back. On an ephemeral sandbox that no other conversation holds, termination destroys the sandbox, and the memory the agent works from goes with it. A persistent or shared sandbox stays up for the conversations that remain on it. The transcript stays in both cases.

A sandbox that a configured ceiling reclaims leaves the conversation resumable, and leaves the agent without its earlier context. State what matters again on the next turn.

Where to go next