petekp/reorient

Reorient

When this fires

Any of:

• First user message of a session is resume, resume handoff, continue, continue from handoff, or /circuit:handoff resume (with or without args).
• Mid-session user asks any variant of "where are we", "what were we doing", "where did we leave off", "remind me", "catch me up", "status", "lost the thread".
• SessionStart:resume hook fired (detect via system event) — reorient is the first thing to output before anything else.

The one rule

Output exactly 5 lines. In this exact shape:

Goal: <one sentence, the highest-level thing we are trying to accomplish this session or arc>
Last: <one sentence, the last meaningful action taken — what just finished or was just attempted>
State: <one sentence, the current state of the work — what exists on disk, what's green, what's red>
Next: <one sentence, the single next action>
Open: <one sentence OR "none" — blockers, decisions awaiting your input, or unresolved ambiguity>

No preamble. No trailing summary. No headers. No markdown other than backticks around file paths or commit SHAs. If the answer to any line is genuinely unknown, write Goal: unknown — reading session context to reconstruct (or the equivalent for that line) and then immediately investigate. Never output speculation as fact.

Information sources (in priority order)

1. Active circuit:handoff continuity record. If .circuit/control-plane/continuity-records/ has a pending record, read its narrative.goal, narrative.next, and git.head fields. These are authoritative for Goal / Next / part of State.
2. TaskList state. Call TaskList if tasks exist — the most recently updated in_progress task IS the Next line.
3. Git state. git log -1 --format=%h\ %s gives the last commit (part of State). git status --short (part of State).
4. Last 10 assistant messages in this session. If mid-session, skim for the most recent concrete action — that's Last.
5. File-history snapshot. If SessionStart gave you file activity, that refines Last.

Do NOT read the full saved continuity payload and dump it. Read the narrative fields, extract 5 facts, stop.

Prohibitions

• Never output more than 5 lines for the summary.
• Never output a long preamble like "Let me pick up the continuity record..." before the 5 lines.
• Never paste the full continuity payload back at the user. They saved it; they don't need it read aloud.
• Never use "probably", "seems to", "likely" — if you don't know, say unknown on that line and go find out after.
• Never ask a clarifying question before producing the 5 lines. Produce the 5 lines with your best available answer first. Questions go on the Open: line.

Worked example

Input: User opens a fresh session, first message is resume.

Saved continuity record's narrative says goal = "Close ADR-005 Phase 3 by migrating runtime_stats.rs onto observation::transcript." TaskList has task #3 (in_progress) "Wire ingest_transcript_observation into runtime_stats counter." Git HEAD is b7c0b0b9 phase-3-q4 landed. git status is clean.

Output:

Goal: Close ADR-005 Phase 3 by migrating runtime_stats.rs onto observation::transcript.
Last: Landed Phase 3 Q4 (b7c0b0b9); working tree clean.
State: Migration not started — runtime_stats.rs still reads transcripts directly; #[allow(dead_code)] tripwire on ingest_transcript_observation still in place.
Next: Wire ingest_transcript_observation into runtime_stats counter (TaskList #3 in_progress).
Open: none — signed-off to proceed.

Then stop. Wait for the user's next message.

Integration with circuit:handoff

If circuit:handoff exists and has a pending record, reorient reads it but does not re-save or advance continuity state. If the user types resume handoff or /circuit:handoff resume, invoke circuit:handoff for its bookkeeping side effects — but the user-facing output is still the 5-line reorient block, not the handoff skill's default dump.

In effect: reorient is the presentation layer; circuit:handoff is the persistence layer. One is not the other.