OpenRiot v7.9.54 — The Machine Asks Permission

“The machine remembered every window you had open. Every terminal. Every browser tab. Every floating mpv window tucked into the corner of workspace 4. It saved them all on shutdown and brought them back on boot — every single time. It never asked. It just did. You might have been rebooting to test something. You might have been shutting down for the night and wanted a clean slate in the morning. The machine didn’t care. The machine was a dog that kept bringing back the same stick. Now the machine asks. A single file. A single word. ‘true’ means yes. Anything else means no. The stick stays where you left it.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.54

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Release Overview

Window restore is now opt-in. Shutdown still saves your layout. Startup only restores it if you’ve told the machine you want it back. One config file. One word. The machine stops assuming.

Total changes: restore.cfg gate, one file, 12 lines.

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🪟 Window Restore: Opt-In

The old behavior was unconditional. Every shutdown saved the window layout. Every boot restored it. Terminals reopened. Browsers came back. Floating windows reappeared exactly where you left them. The machine was helpful to a fault.

The new behavior adds a gate. Shutdown still saves the layout — that part hasn’t changed. But on startup, the machine checks ~/.config/openriot/restore.cfg before restoring anything.

echo true > ~/.config/openriot/restore.cfg

If the file contains true (and nothing else), windows restore as before. If the file is missing, empty, or contains anything other than true — the machine starts clean. No windows. No layout. No questions.

Default behavior: restore is off. Fresh installs get a clean desktop on every boot. Users who want the old behavior opt in with one command.

The Turing Police would call this “user-configurable session persistence.” We call it not bringing back the stick when you didn’t throw it.

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🧾 Files Changed

File	Change
source/window/snapshot.go	shouldRestore() reads
	~/.config/openriot/restore.cfg; returns true only
	if content is exactly true. RestoreLayout() calls
	shouldRestore() and skips restore when disabled.

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🗣️ Final Words

“The machine was saving everything because it could. Not because you asked. The difference between capability and consent is a config file. We added the file. The machine still remembers. It just doesn’t assume you want to remember.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.54