Session Continue — Cold-Open Orientation

Mirror of /super-bootstrap:session-close: it lands the carry, this picks it up. The read side of the cold-pickup test — "can a cold session orient from files alone?" — run as a procedure. Consumer of the SESSION-STATE/ ledger — reads every carry in it, claims the one the user picks, leaves the rest as found. Naming, slots, and conflict handling follow session-close's § Ledger convention.

Two entry states

Detected state	Shape
Root SESSION-STATE/ holds ≥1 carry, the picked one's pointers resolve	resume — reconstruct that carry, confirm the next step
Folder absent or empty, OR every carry names gone targets	cold-orient — no in-flight carry to take; hand off to /super-bootstrap:needs-me

Protocol

The gateway runs this inline — it reads the live session's root and docs in its own context, dispatches no subagent, pins no model.

1. Read the ledger

List root SESSION-STATE/ with ls (or Read a concrete path) — an empty glob result is not evidence of absence, so gate on a listing that errors loudly. Any carry file → resume. Folder absent or empty → cold-orient.

Read every carry file. Each is one session's independent carry: an empty or conflict-marked file is dead on its own terms and leaves its siblings fully valid.

A root SESSION-STATE.md left by the single-file contract reads as one more carry — offer it alongside the rest.

2. Resume — pick a carry, then reconstruct

Exactly one live carry → take it. Several → surface the list (label, anchor, next step, last-modified) and let the user pick; the others stay as found. A carry whose owning session is long gone still reads as a normal carry — offer it with its age and let the user resume, leave, or clear it.

Claim the taken carry — rename it <label>-<this-session-id>.md: label kept, id replaced, content untouched. The pick is the gate: a carry nobody took keeps its author's id, and a live session's carry is only claimable when the user — who alone knows what else is running — hands it over.

The carry holds the volatile delta + pointers; the card holds the durable state. Reconstruct the picked carry:

• Parse the convention's slots.
• Follow Read first — open each card it names (docs/work/{ID}.md) and read the cold-reader read set docs/work/README.md § Thread contract names as the lead, the latest ## Progress as the resume point (done step, next step, binding watch-outs). Then any other doc it names. The picture is the card's current truth, not the carry's echo.
• Test each pointer — a card ID or doc path that no longer resolves is a gone target (a deleted card = resolved). Any load-bearing pointer gone → that carry is stale; say why, then offer the remaining carries, or drop to cold-orient when none is left.

3. Cold-orient — no carry

No carries, or every one stale → report "no in-flight carry" and hand off to /super-bootstrap:needs-me. docs/work/ absent → "No runway installed. Run /super-bootstrap:setup." instead.

4. Surface + confirm

Surface the reconstructed picture: where work stopped, the next step, the watch-outs — card first, carry delta beside it. Then confirm the next step before executing — this skill orients and hands back; it does not auto-dive. A confirmed card resumes as pickup — framing line + route per CLAUDE.md.

Output

• The shape taken (resume / cold-orient), the reconstructed picture (anchor, card lead, next step, watch-outs), and any gone pointers that forced a fallback.
• Every carry found, when more than one — so the user sees what the other sessions are holding, not only the picked one.
• Resume: the claimed filename and the next step echoed for confirmation. Cold-orient: that no carry was in flight, and the needs-me handoff.

Rules

• Claim on pick, bodies read-only. The rename that claims the taken carry is this skill's one write — bodies stay as authored (rewrite is session-close's park, delete its done-close), and untaken carries stay as found.
• Orient, don't dive. Reconstruct the picture and confirm the next step; the user launches the work.
• Card leads, carry trails. Read the card's per-type lead blocks before trusting the carry's State; where they disagree, the card wins.
• Stale carry falls back. A load-bearing pointer to a gone target invalidates that carry — offer the siblings, or cold-orient when none remain. Name the gone pointer; never resume onto a dangling reference.
• One dead carry leaves the rest alive. Staleness, emptiness, and conflict markers are per-carry verdicts, never grounds to discard the ledger.
• Inline procedure. No argument, no subagent, no model pin.