Environment timeout

Limit auto-stop timeout options to control resource usage and costs.

Requires Core plan or higher.

Limit how long environments can stay idle before auto-stopping. Useful when:

• Controlling cloud infrastructure costs from forgotten environments
• Ensuring resources are available for other team members
• Preventing “never timeout” settings that waste compute

Configuration

Select maximum timeout duration: 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours, or No max (includes “Never”).

Effect on users

Users only see timeout options up to the policy maximum. For example, with “3 hours” max, options are: 30 min, 1 hour, 3 hours.

Users can also set an environment’s inactivity timeout from the CLI when creating or updating an environment:

ona environment create https://github.com/org/repo --class-id <class-id> --inactivity-timeout 1h
ona environment update <environment-id-or-name> --inactivity-timeout 3h
ona environment update <environment-id-or-name> --inactivity-timeout 0s

0s requests that auto-stop is disabled. The CLI is subject to the same plan and organization policy limits as the UI.

When an environment is idle

An environment is not idle as long as any of the following are true:

• Plain SSH session is open: Any open SSH connection (terminal, SCP, SFTP, tunnels) prevents the environment from going idle, regardless of user interaction. Connection presence alone is enough. Note: VS Code Desktop opens an SSH connection to the environment, but that connection is excluded from activity tracking. VS Code uses its own activity signals instead.
• VS Code is active (Desktop or Browser): The VS Code extension sends activity signals based on keyboard and mouse interaction. After a short period without interaction, VS Code stops signaling and the environment is considered idle.
• JetBrains Gateway is active: JetBrains sends activity signals based on keyboard and mouse interaction in the IDE. After approximately 5 minutes without interaction, JetBrains stops signaling and the environment is considered idle.
• Ona Agent is running: The environment is not idle while an Ona AI agent session is executing a task.
• CLI keep-alive is active: The ona environment keep-alive command prevents idle as long as a watched process is running (see below).

The following do not prevent an environment from going idle:

• Background processes running inside the environment (builds, servers, cron jobs)
• Port forwarding and shared/exposed port traffic (HTTP requests to forwarded ports)
• File system changes
• CPU or memory usage

Activity is tracked in 5-minute intervals. After your configured timeout elapses, the actual auto-stop may occur several minutes later. For example, with a 30-minute timeout, if you go idle at 2:00 PM the environment may stop around 2:35 PM.

Common scenarios

Scenario	Will it be considered idle?
VS Code open, idle (Desktop or Browser)	Yes. VS Code stops sending activity signals after a short period without keyboard or mouse interaction
JetBrains open, idle	Yes. JetBrains stops sending activity signals after approximately 5 minutes without keyboard or mouse interaction
Editor closed, terminal SSH session open	No. An open SSH connection prevents idle
All editor/SSH sessions closed, background build running	Yes. Background processes do not prevent idle
Laptop goes to sleep with VS Code open	Depends. If the sleep duration exceeds the configured timeout, the environment may auto-stop before VS Code can resume. JS timers freeze during sleep, so no activity signals are sent until the laptop wakes
Laptop goes to sleep with JetBrains open	Yes. JetBrains stops signaling during sleep, so the environment will auto-stop after the configured timeout

Keep environment alive during long-running tasks

For long-running tasks like simulations, builds, or data processing that may exceed the timeout, use the CLI keep-alive command to prevent automatic shutdown while a process is running.

# Watch an existing process by PID
ona environment keep-alive --pid 1234

# Execute and watch a command
ona environment keep-alive -- python simulation.py

# Run in quiet mode (suppress output except errors)
ona environment keep-alive -q -- ./long-running-script.sh

Flag	Description
--pid	PID of an existing process to watch
--interval	Interval between activity signals (default: 5m)
--source	Source identifier for activity signals
-q, --quiet	Suppress output except errors
--environment-id	Environment ID (auto-detected inside environments)

The command prevents the environment from going idle by sending signals every 5 minutes while the watched process is alive. When the process terminates, the command exits (propagating the exit code if a command was executed).