Recap

Recap

The user just sat down and has no context loaded — they were asleep, in a meeting, or working elsewhere. Give them a 30-60 second read that lets them decide what to do next, not a transcript of the session.

1. Refresh (1-2 minutes, read-only)

Check whatever this session actually put in flight — skip categories that don't apply:

• Background agents/subagents — ListAgents for anything this session spawned; if one is still running, report it as in-progress, don't wait on it.
• Background shell/workflow jobs — TaskOutput/Monitor for anything started with run_in_background or Workflow.
• Scheduled work — CronList for a routine/loop this session created.
• An open PR — gh pr view / gh pr checks if this session opened or is waiting on one; pull the live CI/review state, don't rely on what the conversation last said.
• Uncommitted work — git status / git diff in every repo touched this session, so a "done" claim from earlier is checked against what's actually on disk.

This step only reads state. Do not fix a failing check, push a commit, merge a PR, or resume an unfinished task while refreshing — recap's whole point is a truthful snapshot, and mixing in new work defeats it, however small the fix looks.

2. Reconstruct the goal

State the goal in one line, in the user's terms, not implementation language. Pull it from the conversation, plan/task state, or — if genuinely unclear — the diff and recent commits. Don't guess and present it as fact if the evidence is thin; say it's unclear instead.

3. Report — short, plain, structured

Plain language, no jargon, skimmable in under a minute:

• Goal — one line.
• Status — 2-4 short lines max: done vs in-progress vs blocked, from the refreshed state in step 1, not stale assumptions from earlier in the conversation.
• Needs from you — only when something is genuinely blocked on the user. If there's a real decision to make, don't dump it as paragraphs: invoke clarify-request so it arrives as one clear question at a time with a recommended answer, instead of asking the user to read and parse it themselves. If nothing's needed, say so plainly — don't invent a question to fill the slot.
• Next steps — a short list, each line tagged [You] or [Me], so the user can see at a glance what's on them versus what you'll pick up once they say go.

Don't

• Don't start, resume, or fix anything during a recap — not even something small and obviously right. Report it and let the user decide; that decision belongs in step 3's "Needs from you" or a [Me] next step, not something to act on now.
• Don't re-explain things the user already knows from earlier in the session — recap is written for someone with zero loaded context, but stay terse: state the fact, skip the backstory.
• Don't pad the status with hedging or exhaustive detail. If the user wants more, they'll ask.