Hot Reload

Awen watches your story assembly directory for changes and automatically reloads stories when DLLs are rebuilt.

How It Works

When --watch is enabled (the default), Awen uses two mechanisms to detect changes:

1. FileSystemWatcher — monitors the --dir directory for *.dll file changes (Created, Changed, Renamed events)
2. Polling fallback — a 5-second interval poll that compares file write timestamps, catching changes that FileSystemWatcher may miss on some platforms

When a change is detected, Awen applies a 500ms debounce window to batch rapid successive events (common during a build), then triggers a reload.

Reload Process

On reload, Awen:

1. Saves the current UI state (selected story, filter text)
2. Restarts the application process with a --restore flag pointing to a state file
3. Rescans the assembly directory for updated stories
4. Restores the previous selection and filter

This ensures a clean reload without stale type references from previously loaded assemblies.

Controlling Hot Reload

Option	Effect
--watch (default)	Enable hot-reload
--no-watch	Disable hot-reload entirely

# Hot-reload enabled (default)
Awen --dir ./stories

# Hot-reload disabled
Awen --dir ./stories --no-watch

Workflow

A typical development workflow:

1. Launch Awen pointing at your stories output directory
2. Edit your control or story code in your IDE
3. Rebuild (e.g., dotnet build)
4. Awen detects the new DLLs and reloads automatically
5. Your changes appear in the preview without restarting Awen