session-reflection git:20260827.1358d50A

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---
name: session-reflection
description: Use when the user asks to reflect on a session, or when closing substantial work: the orchestrator reconciles the session against memory and the coordination substrate (briefs/plans/tasks/approvals), curates and closes what it can decide on its own, and reports what changed.
---

# Session Reflection

Session reflection is everything the session lived, contrasted against what
belongs to each project, until no loop is left dangling. It recovers the whole
arc, reconciles it against the durable corpus in both directions, and leaves
every item — settled or open — with an owner a later session can find.

Upstream are the transcript, the specialist contracts, and the injected digest.
Downstream is memory curation: reflection ends when the corpus is correct.
Compaction is a separate act, performed only when the user asks for it.

## Process

1. **Recover the whole arc.** Scan from the session opening for accepted and
   rejected proposals, deferrals, closures, user corrections, and specialist
   reactions — recency is not weight, an early settled choice still stands.
   Include `cross_layer_impacts`, `open_gaps`, and `failure_report` findings
   even where the user never reacted: they are observations about Gaia, not
   conversational agreements. `reference.md` holds the full recovery pass.
2. **Reconcile in both directions.** For each initiative the session touched,
   read its live corpus — `gaia memory get-relevant --initiative=<key>`
   returns that whole pending set uncapped, with bodies — and ask: what did
   this session produce with no home yet, and what already-open pending did
   it close, advance, or invalidate? A topic search only answers whether your
   own phrasing has a row; the closure you owe is usually phrased in terms
   that predate the session that solved it. Read briefs, plans, tasks, and
   approvals the same way — a conversation cannot close an object the
   substrate still shows open. A session that produced any Gaia improvement
   touched `gaia_system` by definition, whatever project it was nominally
   working on — sweep it too. `reference.md` holds the reverse-sweep
   mechanics and the objective-state checks that verify a `SKIP`.
3. **Classify disjointly.** Separate settled decisions and learnings,
   genuinely open work, and Gaia improvements. When closure is uncertain,
   classify as open; a lost pending costs more than an extra review. For
   anything about Gaia itself, `memory/SKILL.md`'s one-line test decides the
   initiative — `gaia_system` for an observed failure or friction,
   project-scoped `gaia` for a decision to build or change something.
4. **Give every item a home, and know what the home does.** The pending
   worklist that returns to the user each session selects `class=thread` with
   status `carry_forward` or `open` only — an `anchor` still reaches a
   dispatched agent as held knowledge, but never comes back as work. Filing
   live work as an anchor hides it; filing settled knowledge as a thread
   turns the worklist into noise. `SKIP` is a home only when you name the
   canonical object that owns the item — already-canonical work is
   referenced, never copied.
5. **Adjudicate against the exception boundary.** The boundary table lives in
   `memory/SKILL.md` ("Process" step 5) — this is a pointer to it, not a
   copy. Most operations are decided and executed directly; only the rows the
   boundary marks "ask first" or "veto" wait on the user.
6. **Run the curation, closures included.** Materialize the step 2 closures
   alongside the new rows; `reclassify` and `append` are non-mutative, so
   nothing but omission keeps a resolved thread open. A closing arc that
   passes the milestone test in `reference.md` uses `checkpoint`, one atomic
   write; an ordinary close does not.
7. **State the resume point.** One line naming what the next session picks
   up — a pointer, not a container: everything it names already has a row.

## Working tables

These tables are internal working discipline, never the surface shown to the
user: they are how the pass is worked, one owner per item, on the way to the
curation that step 5 and step 6 already ran. No table entry holds a bare
sentence — a working method that cannot state an item without stating its
owner cannot lose one to prose. Omit an empty section instead of inventing
content, and use the user's own vocabulary and language.

`SAVE`, `APPEND`, `TRANSITION`, `LINK`, and `SKIP` are the working verbs
`memory` adjudicates against the exception boundary; a closure or graduation
is a `TRANSITION`, materialized as `reclassify` — `memory/reference.md` holds
the exact forms.

### What we settled

Accepted decisions, closures, and reusable learnings, each with evidence of
agreement or objective completion. Most rows are `SKIP` naming the object
that already holds them; a decision that will constrain a future choice is
`SAVE`, filed as knowledge rather than as work.

| Item | Home | Operation |
|---|---|---|
| the decision, in the user's words | slug, commit, or brief/plan/task id | SAVE, APPEND, LINK, or SKIP |

### Open work

One row per unresolved concern, plus one row per pending the step 2 sweep
found this session resolved — a pending you closed is a `TRANSITION`, and
leaving it out is how a worklist grows past the attention anyone can give it.

| Item | Home | Operation |
|---|---|---|
| the concern, in the user's words | slug, brief/plan/task id, or initiative | SAVE, APPEND, TRANSITION, LINK, or SKIP |

### What Gaia should improve

    Symptom      observable behavior, not diagnosis
    Component    one precise owner
    Evidence     observed proof
    Reproduction exact repeatable route, or unknown
    → feedback_<component>_<symptom> · type feedback · SAVE or APPEND

Worked in full, not summarized — a defect whose evidence was never worked
through is a slug with nothing behind it. `reference.md` holds the field
definitions and the `gaia_system` retrieval query a wrong initiative or type
hides from.

## Output

What the user sees is the REPORT after curation runs, not the working tables
above: one line per change, naming its effect on memory or on the project's
history rather than the raw verb that produced it. A `type=user` row is
flagged above the rest of the report, for veto — the write already happened;
flagging it is what lets the user reverse it, not what authorized it.

### Resume point

One line naming what the next session picks up. If the user asks to compact
after this, `gaia-compact` builds its own handoff; reflection hands it a
pointer, not a container.

## Ownership and consent

The orchestrator recovers, reconciles, adjudicates, and executes within the
exception boundary in `memory/SKILL.md`; `gaia-operator` materializes what the
orchestrator has already adjudicated. The user reads the result in the
post-curation report, not a proposal awaiting confirmation — the boundary
table names the few operations that still ask first or wait on a veto.
Independent operations are best-effort, a checkpoint stays atomic. Reflection
itself is not a new durable object.

## Handoffs

- Load `memory` for the exception boundary, lifecycle verbs, and initiative
  scoping.
- Load `reference.md` for dense-session recovery, the reverse sweep, the
  Gaia-improvement shape, the milestone test, and the anti-patterns to avoid.
- Load `examples.md` for the integrated reflection → curation flow.
- Load `gaia-compact` only when the user asks to compact.