I used AI tools to help draft and edit this post. I checked the facts and the wording, and the original lives at geekindata.com . The diagrams are on that page.

Three clocks: auth, UI, and conversation

Key takeaways

Treat auth session, UI state, and agent conversation as three separate clocks.

Own the conversation list in your API; exclude playground and portal junk.

Persist a durable conversation id before you open the stream.

Define refresh, quit, recycle, and token-renewal behavior in an ADR.

Show incomplete runs from server truth, not EventSource liveness.

Keep auth lifetime and conversation lifetime separate in support language.

Users expect ChatGPT rules: close the tab, come back, the thread is still there. Platform agent services often have their own conversation store.…