Passoff — Compressed Session Snapshot

Goal: hand the reader the state of play in the fewest tokens that preserve intent. Optimize fidelity-per-token, not prose.

When to invoke

User types /passoff or asks for a state dump; before /clear, compaction, or a model swap; end of a working session.

Sibling skills: handoff — this session's work resumed by a fresh you, carrying behavioral state and lessons, not just task state. /spinoff — a side branch needing only enough context for its own topic. Pass a passoff as the 3rd argument to bash ~/.claude/scripts/spinoff-session.sh <task-file> [model] <passoff-file>, or pipe the text on stdin when no file exists.

Core principle: legend defines meaning

Any single-token word or symbol can mark any concept — provided the legend binds it. The notation is not sacred; the legend is. Bind now to in-progress and now means in-progress for that document; bind >>> or xyz and the same holds.

So: pick whatever reads best for the audience, reuse short tokens across roles when the legend stays unambiguous within the document, and never list a marker you did not use.

Default to English words. Reach for a symbol only when the English equivalent costs two or more tokens. Rationale, the full cheap-token list, and the avoid-list: references/token-economy.md.

One caveat that bites at emit time: > at the start of a line is a markdown blockquote. Keep > inline; start lines with - or a header.

Default output format

Fixed order. Empty sections are omitted, not left blank. Apply the compression rules to every line.

# PASSOFF · <slug> · <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM>

## LEGEND
now in-progress   done completed   next upcoming   blocked stuck   drop abandoned ?  open question   ref pointer   note decision
>  causes    =>  implies    <-  depends on    @path:line   #branch   $cmd
[H/M/L] priority   {S|M|L} effort   ~approx

## NOW
- <task> @file:line — <one-line state>  blocked:<blocker>

## DONE
- <task>  > <outcome>  ref:<commit|file>

## NEXT
- [H] <task>  because <reason>  {S|M|L}
- [M] <task>  > unblocks <thing>

## BLOCKED / OPEN ?
- blocked: <issue>  > need <resolution>
- ? <question>  note:<where surfaced>

## NOTES
- <decision>  because <reason>  ref:<file/commit>

## REFS
- code: @path:line — <why matters>
- docs: <path/url> — <contents>
- prior: <sha|PR#|session-id> — <topic>
- skills: /<skill> — <when to invoke>

## RESUME
$ <exact command(s) to pick up>
#branch · uncommitted: <count> · tests: <pass/fail/unrun>

## REHYDRATE TASKS
Next agent: each line = one TaskCreate. Format: `[priority] title || activeForm`.
- [H] <imperative title> || <present-continuous active form>

Worked examples at two densities: references/examples.md.

Compression rules

Full caveman register on every prose-bearing line — the complete ruleset, intensity calibration, and per-line self-check are in references/caveman-style.md (vendored; the upstream plugin is not required).

1. Legend governs. Pick markers, bind them, use them consistently. Different documents may bind differently.
2. Trim the legend. Only entries the body actually uses.
3. Caveman prose, full intensity. Drop articles, copulas where the subject is obvious, filler, pleasantries, hedging. Fragments fine. Pattern: [thing] [action] [reason]. Bug @auth/mw.py:84 — token expiry uses < not <=, never a sentence explaining it.
4. One line per item. Wrap only when a thought genuinely does not fit.
5. Cite, do not summarize. Findings over one line become gist plus ref:<location>.
6. Tag NEXT with priority and effort so the reader sequences without re-deriving.
7. RESUME is literal. Exact command, exact branch, copy-paste-runnable. <MANDATORY>Never omit it.</MANDATORY>
8. <REQUIREMENTS>Preserve exact strings for errors, paths, shas, env vars, commands. Compression applies to prose, never identifiers.</REQUIREMENTS>
9. REHYDRATE TASKS mirrors NEXT. Same items recast for direct TaskCreate consumption — the TaskList clears across /clear and session boundaries, so the next agent rebuilds it. Format [priority] imperative title || activeForm; no markers in the title, no commentary.
10. Auto-clarity escape hatch. Drop the register for security warnings, irreversible-action warnings, and any fragment ordering that could be misread. A destructive RESUME command gets a normal-prose warning line above it, then the register resumes.

Sourcing state

Pull in this order: the current conversation (what was just worked on, decided, or left half-finished); git status and git log -5; the active TaskList; branch and worktree state; and open questions the user raised — those are the most expensive context to recover, so they are never dropped.

<MANDATORY> Do not invent state. Unknown → omit the section or mark `? unknown`. </MANDATORY>

Anti-patterns

<ALERT> - ✗ Prose paragraphs. Compress them. - ✗ Restating file contents. Point with `@path:line`. - ✗ Vague NEXT items (`improve performance`). Use concrete predicates: `batch X chunks of N`. - ✗ Dropping RESUME. Highest-leverage line in the document. - ✗ Legend entries the body never uses. - ✗ Bracketed markers (`[done]`, `[x]`). Two extra tokens each; use bare. - ✗ Color emoji. Two tokens each plus variation selectors. - ✗ Inventing state. Mark `? unknown` or omit. </ALERT>