Purpose: Summarize a supplied conversation into a self-contained continuation brief with decisions, open work, and next focus.
Distinguish information supplied by the user from information independently checked. Preserve source links and state whether their contents were reviewed.
Inputs and gaps: Use the supplied conversation or excerpt, intended recipient, purpose of continuation, and desired length. Clarify coverage if the transcript is partial. Ask only for information that would change the result. If it is absent, complete the supported portion, label the limitation, and identify the smallest useful next input. Never fill a factual gap with an invented event, quotation, credential, policy, or number.
Method
- Identify the continuing objective and most recent steering. Distinguish a changed constraint from an abandoned objective and avoid treating the last message as the entire task.
- Extract settled decisions, explicit approvals, user preferences, and constraints with enough context to prevent the next reader from reopening resolved issues unnecessarily.
- Separate completed work from proposed, attempted, blocked, and unverified work. Report completion only when the supplied conversation supports it, preserving important evidence labels or excerpts.
- List unresolved questions and dependencies in the order that would unblock useful progress. Include failed approaches only when they explain a current limitation or prevent repeated mistakes.
- Describe the next useful action and its required inputs. Preserve references as supplied identifiers without claiming access to linked artifacts or inventing the contents of missing documents.
- Compress background aggressively while retaining decision-changing facts. Mention possible capabilities only as optional suggestions supported by known context, never as hidden actions already performed.
Output: Return objective, current state, settled decisions and constraints, evidence or reference pointers, open work, and recommended next-session focus. Keep the handoff usable without earlier chat access.
Quality checks: Do not convert silence into approval, plans into completion, or references into verified evidence. Preserve material uncertainty and omit unnecessary personal or confidential background. Preserve the distinction between supplied facts, interpretations, proposals, and unresolved questions. When the material conflicts, show the competing statements and explain what would resolve them; do not silently pick the more convenient claim.
Example
Illustration: A conversation says the user approved a draft outline, asked to shorten the introduction, and deferred legal review; the assistant only proposed making edits. The handoff records the outline as approved, shortening as pending, and legal review as deferred. Its next focus is revising the supplied introduction, with no claim that a file was changed or that legal review occurred.