Persist inherited environment removals

[schickling-assistant]

Why

An environment variable that was intentionally absent when a session was created can appear after pty restart or a permanent respawn because the replacement inherits the restarter's ambient environment. Assignments already have a persisted --env representation; removals did not.

Closes #143.

What

• add repeatable pty run --unset-env KEY and programmatic unsetEnv?: string[];
• persist removals in session metadata and carry them through manual restart, run -a, bundled CLI delegation, and permanent respawn;
• document the optional metadata field, child PTY_SESSION/TERM invariants, and regenerate shell completions.

Rationale

Environment assembly remains one ordered policy: inherit (or isolate), remove unsetEnv keys, then apply explicit extraEnv assignments. This makes assignment precedence independent of CLI flag order. Exact env remains mutually exclusive with inherited-environment policy. Older metadata omits unsetEnv and keeps the previous ambient-inheritance behavior.

Validation

• bun run typecheck
• bun run build
• 71 focused tests covering manual restart, run -a recreation, permanent respawn, isolate/remove/assignment precedence, exact-env exclusion, bundled CLI delegation, help, generated completions, and storage-doc drift
• documentation examples: 12/13 passed; the existing interactive Vim example timed out at its 10-second host boundary

Validated head: c0a1e636aea2ba3ce71dc0e72942394fb7f4fe25.

Posted on behalf of @schickling

field	value
agent_name	co1-sage
agent_session_id	ed878dac-3735-4276-b3e0-ea1b1cd65291
agent_tool	Codex CLI
agent_tool_version	0.145.0
agent_runtime	Codex CLI 0.145.0
agent_model	unknown
runtime_profile	/nix/store/mnx8agbdq3wiyb6vz63lhgscgazkrn98-coding-agent-runtime-profile/share/coding-agents/profile.json
skills_manifest	/nix/store/5r69m9k2llmri3na81518zx0a7y0d3cn-agent-skills-corpus/share/agent-skills/manifest.json
worktree	pty/schickling-assistant/2026-07-31-2026-07-31-persisted-env-unset
machine	dev3
tooling_profile	dotfiles@0fb7e03

[myobie]

Exact review green at c0a1e63. Removal-before-assignment precedence, exact-env exclusion, restart/permanent persistence, CLI fallback, docs, completions, backward compatibility, and hosted gates agree.

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

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[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Preserve unsetEnv in interactive restarts

When an exited or vanished session is restarted by selecting it in the interactive session manager, src/tui/interactive.ts's doRestart recreates it without passing meta.unsetEnv. Consequently, an environment variable removed by --unset-env can reappear from the TUI process's ambient environment, despite being persisted here and preserved by the CLI and permanent-restart paths. Pass the persisted removal policy through this restart path as well.

Useful? React with 👍 / 👎.

[schickling-assistant]

Thank you, Nathan — this became a genuinely reusable lifecycle primitive instead of a one-off NO_COLOR exception. Persisted removals make restart behavior deterministic for every inherited environment flag.

Posted on behalf of @schickling

field	value
agent_name	co1-sage
agent_session_id	ed878dac-3735-4276-b3e0-ea1b1cd65291
agent_tool	Codex CLI
agent_tool_version	0.145.0
agent_runtime	Codex CLI 0.145.0
agent_model	unknown
runtime_profile	/nix/store/mnx8agbdq3wiyb6vz63lhgscgazkrn98-coding-agent-runtime-profile/share/coding-agents/profile.json
skills_manifest	/nix/store/5r69m9k2llmri3na81518zx0a7y0d3cn-agent-skills-corpus/share/agent-skills/manifest.json
worktree	pty/main
machine	dev3
tooling_profile	dotfiles@0fb7e03