## The continuity ledger Before choosing an operation\, name the state you want to change\. “Reset my session” is too vague\. It might mean stopping a response\, dropping conversation context\, starting a different identity\, discarding provider\-facing handles\, or deleting local history\. Those are different requests\. ### The seven boundaries | Layer | What it means | What it is not | | --- | --- | --- | | **Live and model context** | The messages currently held by the agent\, plus the transformations used to prepare model context\. | Every entry ever retained in the journal\, or an exact captured HTTP request\. | | **Durable journal** | The saved JSONL conversation record\, including messages and metadata\. It can retain older and alternative paths\. | A directory snapshot or a complete record of every unfinished streaming token\. | | **Persistent session identity** | The identity in the session header\, exposed by `SessionManager.getSessionId()`\. | Necessarily the same value as a provider\-facing session ID\. | | **Provider\-facing state** | Request identity\, local transport\/session handles\, and possibly a separate prompt\-cache key\. | A guarantee about remote retention\, remote deletion\, or cache behavior\. | | **Cwd and project scope** | The active working directory\, recorded header cwd\, and any additional workspace roots\. These can differ during fallback or failure\. | A copy of the project at the time the conversation began\. | | **Workspace files** | The files that exist now in the project\. | Files restored merely because an old conversation was reopened\. | | **Artifacts and outputs** | Session\-adjacent artifacts and nested journals\, generated HTML\, temporary dump sidecars\, and copied text\. | One automatically synchronized\, automatically deleted privacy boundary\. | The rendered transcript is another **view** of these layers\. It may collapse older context or hide some content\. A shorter display does not establish a shorter journal\. A journal’s entries have their own IDs and parent relationships\. The active leaf selects a conversation path for context rebuilding\. You do not need to learn the entire tree implementation here\; you do need to remember that **all stored entries** and **the active conversation path** are not the same thing\. ### Milestone\: Identify yesterday before opening anything **Need\.** Maya wants yesterday’s Lantern Board discussion\. **Obstacle\.** Yesterday’s conversation says “Ready for pickup\,” but today’s workspace file says “Packed and waiting\.” Both statements can be present without OMP having lost anything\. Read the public fixtures first\: - [Yesterday’s journal]() - [Today’s workspace text]() - [Return Desk exercise inventory]() **Terminal shell — read\-only inspection\, from extracted `examples/`\:** ~~~sh jq -s 'map(select(.type == "session") | {id, cwd, title})' return-desk/yesterday.jsonl jq -s 'map(select(.type == "message" and .message.role == "user") | .message.content)' return-desk/yesterday.jsonl cat return-desk/today.txt ~~~ **Structured example output — derived from the public header\, not a new terminal capture\:** ~~~json [ { "id": "11111111-1111-4111-8111-111111111111", "cwd": "/fictional/lantern-board", "title": "Lantern Board: yesterday's labels" } ] ~~~ The fixture’s user message is\: > For our fictional Lantern Board\, use the label Ready for pickup\. We will revisit it tomorrow\. The workspace file identifies its current label as\: > Current label\: Packed and waiting **What changes\?** These inspection commands change neither the fixture nor an OMP session\. **What stays separate\?** The full session identity\, the header’s recorded cwd\, the conversation text\, and today’s file contents are four different observations\. The short entry ID of a message is not the persistent session identity\. **Recorded check\.** `identity-journal-cwd-workspace` reopened a real `SessionManager` journal and retained its identity\, location\, entries\, and cwd while the fictional workspace bytes remained unchanged\. **Failure and recovery\.** If `jq` cannot read or parse the fixture\, fix the working directory or restore a clean downloaded copy\. Do not substitute a personal journal\. The `/fictional/lantern-board` path and `fictional-offline-model` label are fixture data\, not a project or provider to configure\. **Self\-check\.** After resuming yesterday\, which label should `today.txt` contain\? **Answer\:** “Packed and waiting\.” Resuming history does not reverse the file change represented by the fixture\. ### A path is not proof of persistence The current manager can allocate a session ID and transcript path before materializing the file\. New\-session persistence is lazy until assistant output or another explicit persistence reason makes the file necessary\. That means\: - An assigned filename does not prove that a resumable file exists\. - An empty new conversation can still have model or thinking metadata in memory\. - A session created with `--no-session` normally has no journal file\, but a dump can still create a temporary sidecar\. - Completed entries and in\-flight streaming text have different durability boundaries\. The supplied `SessionManager` comments describe completed\-entry writes reaching the operating system without `fsync`\: software\-crash durability is not a power\-loss backup guarantee\. **Source anchors\:** `packages/coding-agent/src/session/session-manager.ts` — `SessionManager`\, `getSessionId`\, `getSessionFile`\, `isSessionOnDisk`\, `buildSessionContext`\; `packages/coding-agent/src/session/session-context.ts` — `buildSessionContext`\; `packages/coding-agent/src/session/session-entries.ts` — `SessionHeader`\, `ResetBoundaryEntry`\.