spscream Workstatus
Not start. start orients a clean session from documents; this reports
live state, mid-session, by running a command and describing what it
printed. Its whole point is narrower than it sounds: report what was seen,
not what is remembered.
Rule that matters more than the format below: never answer from conversation memory. Anything checkable gets checked with a command first. "The run is probably still going" without looking at its log is exactly the kind of guess this report exists to rule out.
What to run
bash .floppy/run status
One call collects background jobs, git state (divergence from the remote,
uncommitted files), and the memory wiring, and prints an answer rather than
raw material — a bare ps or git status -uall costs far more to read for
three lines that matter.
If the repository defines a project-specific hook
(.floppy/workstatus-project.sh — servers, corpora, anything specific to
this project's own data), the command runs it automatically; nothing extra
to call for that.
A repository split into halves (see agent-memory) may also support a
--flow flag for the state of the process half itself (memory lint,
wrap-lock, worktrees, recent process edits):
bash .floppy/run status --flow
Use it only when the task is about the process itself — on any other branch of work that half's state is someone else's business, not news.
Beyond the command, three things are worth checking only if the report flagged something odd — not on every call:
- the harness's own list of background tasks — it knows about jobs the
report's
ps-based scan does not show; - a background job's log tail directly, if a stuck run is suspected;
git log origin/HEAD..HEAD --oneline, if the report flagged divergence.
Don't gather more than the report already pointed at.
Format
Five short blocks. Say "empty" for a block with nothing in it — don't manufacture content to fill it; a report that is always equally full stops getting read.
- Where we are — one line: which half, which thread of work.
- Background — a table: job, progress as a number, how long to wait, where its log is. If nothing is running, say so.
- On the agenda — an ordered list of what's next, marking what doesn't need the human.
- Waiting on you — decisions only the human can make. One line each, with the cost of waiting: what specifically can't proceed until they answer.
- Risks right now — uncommitted work, divergence from the remote, stale background jobs, red tests, a half-finished edit left in the tree.
If the current-state file is older than what run status just showed — for
instance the git history moved past what it describes — say that plainly
rather than reporting the file's version of events.