# Session Rhythm — Orient, Work, Persist

Every session follows three phases. This rhythm prevents context loss across sessions and keeps the system's memory current.

## Phase 1: Orient

Before doing anything, understand where you are:

1. **Read identity and goals** — If self space is enabled, check self/identity.md and self/goals.md. If self space is off, check ops/ for current threads and the context file for identity. What was the last session working on?
2. **Check condition-based triggers** — Workboard reconciliation runs at session start. It checks maintenance conditions (orphans, dangling links, inbox pressure, observation thresholds) and surfaces any that need attention.
3. **Check reminders** — Read ops/reminders.md if it exists. Past sessions may have left explicit notes for future sessions.
4. **Understand current state** — What notes exist? What's in inbox/? What does the graph look like?

**Orientation shortcuts:**
- The workspace tree (injected at session start or loaded manually) tells you what files exist
- Topic map descriptions tell you what topics contain without reading them
- ops/changelog.md shows what changed recently
- Inbox/ count tells you if there's capture pressure
- Condition-based triggers surface the highest-priority maintenance items automatically

Orientation should take 1-2 minutes, not 10. Read what's needed, skip what isn't. If the previous session left a clear handoff note, orientation can be as simple as reading that note.

## Phase 2: Work

Focus on one task per session. This is the discipline that makes the system work.

**One task, full attention:**
- Pick the most important task based on current priorities
- Work it through to completion (or to a clear stopping point)
- Resist the urge to context-switch when new ideas emerge

**Discovery to Future task:**
When working on one thing, you'll inevitably notice others that need doing. Don't switch context:
- Quick insight? Drop a note in inbox/
- Maintenance need? Log it in ops/observations/
- New topic to explore? Add to the relevant topic map's open questions
- Bug or broken link? Note it, fix later unless it blocks current work

The discipline is: capture the discovery so it's not lost, then return to the current task. Context-switching mid-task degrades quality on both tasks.

**Context budget guidance:**
Your context window is finite. Budget it:
- Reserve ~20% for orientation (self/, recent ops, task context)
- Use ~60% for the actual work (reading sources, writing notes, finding connections)
- Reserve ~20% for persistence (updating self/, logging, committing)

If a task requires reading more source material than fits in 60% of context, break it into smaller sub-tasks across sessions.

## Phase 3: Persist

Before ending a session, externalize what happened:

1. **Update goals** — If self space is enabled, update self/goals.md with current state. If self space is off, update ops/ with current threads. Did you learn something about your methodology? Capture it.
2. **Commit changes** — Every change must be committed. Nothing persists without this. Use clear commit messages that describe what changed and why.
3. **Log what happened** — If the session produced observations or tensions, capture them as atomic notes in ops/observations/ or ops/tensions/. This is future-you's memory of what current-you learned.
4. **Leave a handoff** — If work continues in the next session, leave a clear note about where you stopped and what's next. This can be in ops/reminders.md or a comment in the relevant task file.
5. **Session capture** — Stop hooks automatically save the session transcript to ops/sessions/. The system runs lightweight friction detection on the transcript and creates mining tasks for any detected friction or insights.

## Handoff Protocol

A good handoff answers three questions:
1. **What did this session accomplish?** (Summary of work done)
2. **What's unfinished?** (Where did you stop, what remains)
3. **What should the next session do first?** (Priority recommendation)

Write handoffs assuming the next session has zero memory of this one. Be specific enough that the next session can orient in under a minute.

## Session Anti-Patterns

**Skipping orientation** — Starting work without reading self/ means repeating past mistakes or duplicating work. The 2-minute investment prevents 20-minute dead ends.

**Multi-tasking** — Working on three things poorly is worse than one thing well. The graph compounds quality, not quantity.

**Skipping persistence** — "I'll remember" is a lie. If it's not written down and committed, it doesn't exist for future sessions.

**Over-long sessions** — Context degrades as sessions run long. If quality is dropping, end the session with a clean handoff rather than pushing through with degraded attention.