Review Packet choosing a snapshot

Noor needs to understand the fictional Harbor Notes review, including an earlier draft and the nested checklist review.

The first decision is not “text or HTML?” It is which state should the packet represent?

Milestone: Choose the layer before creating an artifact

Need. Produce a reviewable account of the work.

Obstacle. A live-context dump can omit earlier journal history while including current system and tool context. A saved-file export can include earlier history without reconstructing a running agent’s current prompt.

Read the Review Packet inspection recipe. Keep its interactive examples as reference; the runnable public packet exercise uses the fictional saved journals.

For valid saved inputs and distinct output paths, dump and export do not append a “dumped” or “exported” journal entry. Output creation is still a filesystem effect.

What changes? Choosing the operation determines which data is copied into another artifact.

What does not change? Neither operation is a conversation reset or a disclosure scrub.

Recorded check. The Harbor Notes dump contained current context but not the pre-clear message. HTML embedded pre-clear history. Live-state HTML included explicitly fictional current system/tool metadata; file-based HTML did not supply those top-level live fields.

Failure and recovery. If the chosen snapshot does not contain the required evidence, choose the correct layer. Do not solve a missing-history problem by claiming the live dump is complete, and do not solve a privacy problem by hiding a viewer panel.

Self-check. Noor needs the earlier blue-cover discussion. Is a post-clear live dump sufficient?

Answer: Not necessarily. The saved journal/full HTML path retains that earlier entry.

What dump can contain

AgentSession.formatSessionAsText() passes current messages to formatSessionDumpText.

Depending on what those messages contain, the text can include:

• System prompt blocks.
• Model and thinking configuration.
• Tool descriptions and parameter information.
• User, developer, and assistant messages.
• Stored thinking blocks and tool-call arguments.
• Tool results.
• Bash and Python execution records.
• Custom/hook messages.
• File-mention contents.
• Branch and compaction summaries.

The formatter omits bash/Python execution records marked excludeFromContext. That omission is specific to this formatting path. It is not a universal journal or export exclusion policy.

When tool descriptors are already in the system prompt, the formatter can avoid duplicating the separate tool inventory. That does not make the information absent from the dump.

Do not reproduce real system instructions, private dumps, credentials, or hidden reasoning in a public workbook or issue packet. This workbook uses fictional examples precisely so those risks can be taught without publishing them.

Milestone: Account for the sidecar separately

Need. Noor wants to know whether the dump produced another file that also needs review.

Obstacle. A clipboard-oriented command can leave persistent temporary data behind.

The following is a non-runnable reference to the human command. Do not run it against personal history as a workbook exercise.

/dump

The sidecar filename follows the source’s omp-llm-request- naming pattern under the operating system’s temporary directory.

Its fields include:

The sidecar is built locally at the conversion boundary. It is not proof that a provider request occurred, and it is not necessarily identical to the final provider-specific payload after all later transformations.

In the TUI, the command attempts the sidecar first, appends its path and a raw-context warning to the text, then copies that text to the clipboard.

The shared plain-output builtin returns the text instead of invoking the TUI clipboard path.

Recorded check. Sidecars were written from fictional live and in-memory sessions. Injected conversion failure left the plain transcript available. No clipboard operation occurred in those tests.

Failure and recovery.

• Sidecar failure does not suppress the plain transcript.
• The TUI source reports sidecar unavailability; the plain-output handler silently omits the failed sidecar path.
• If clipboard copying fails after sidecar creation, a sidecar may still exist.
• A temporary filename does not mean automatic deletion after the command.

Also, zero live messages do not guarantee the text No messages to dump yet. The current formatter always produces a Configuration section. The sidecar method explicitly returns no path for zero messages, but the formatted text can still be nonempty.

Self-check. Does --no-session mean /dump cannot leave anything on disk?

Answer: No. In-memory conversation formatting can still write a temporary sidecar.

Source anchors: packages/coding-agent/src/session/agent-session.ts — formatSessionAsText, dumpLlmRequestToTmpDir, exportToHtml; packages/coding-agent/src/session/session-dump-format.ts — formatSessionDumpText; packages/coding-agent/src/slash-commands/builtin-collaboration.ts — dump, export; packages/coding-agent/src/modes/controllers/command-controller.ts — handleDumpCommand.