I haven't really thought this out and I don't have aMac to test on but why not just use separate user accounts? Doesn't OSX already reopen every thing?
Not really a smooth experience in my opinion, doesn't map quite as well to the concept of "working context" as I think of it. Also, you'd have to maintain your list of users, and manually sync any settings, etc. - whereas with Cleave, I'm planning on implementing white- or blacklisting of applications on a context-basis (and system settings etc. are implicitly shared).
> Separate user accounts is kind of the naive (and not quite complete) solution to the same problem.
I too have attempted to solve this problem with user accounts; and yeah it doesn't work well. Files are a pain to share, the log-out-log-back-in process takes forever, and a bunch of preferences don't sync across user accounts.
I particularly like the idea of having a super-low-energy mode where it's just for writing or reading, and saved states for my countless research sessions. Also, being able to freeze my dev workspace and resume it any point sounds amazing.
Excited to try it out!