Goal Ledger Resume

Goal Ledger — resume and recover

Treat the ledger and Git as evidence left by another agent. Establish what is verified, repair bookkeeping without discarding work, and continue from the first safe action.

1. Load the contract

If you are a subagent, ignore the ledger and this skill, then continue only the task in the prompt handed to you. Do not treat an unfinished ledger as a blocker or report it unless the prompt explicitly asks for ledger work.

Otherwise, read sections 1–3 of the sibling goal-ledger skill. If .goal-ledger/GOAL.md is missing, say there is no ledger to resume. If status is completed or abandoned, report that and stop.

2. Decide whether this request resumes the goal

• The user asks to resume, or the request matches the recorded Outcome: resume without another intent question.
• The ledger is blocked-on-human and the user answers its blockers: record the answers, return affected items to [todo], and continue.
• Status drafting: return to Gate A. Status approved: if strategy, branch, baseline, or approval commit is missing or inconsistent, return to Gate B; otherwise return to Gate C. Status awaiting-acceptance: report the result and ask for acceptance; do not resume execution.
• An unrelated request: report the unfinished goal and ask whether to resume it or use goal-ledger-abandon. Never overwrite it silently.

3. Reconcile Git

Skip Git steps when Repository: no.

1. Verify the current branch equals Work branch. If not, do not switch with a dirty tree. Report both branches and ask before switching.
2. Verify the immutable baseline exists and is an ancestor of HEAD. If not, stop with the exact inconsistency.
3. Inspect git log ..HEAD, including commit trailers. Classify matching Goal-ID commits, foreign commits, merge commits, and phase begin/close pairs. Record foreign history in Handoff; it may prohibit squashing but does not justify deleting work.
4. Compare locally known starting/work upstream refs with their recorded Gate B SHAs. Record advances, rewinds, divergence, or goal-commit publication in Handoff. On current-branch, any upstream movement prohibits automated squash.
5. Inspect the worktree. A phase-begin commit followed by a clean tree means phase work did not start. A dirty tree means work may have stopped mid-phase; inspect the diff and do not discard it.
6. A completed phase without a matching close commit is unverified until its phase check passes. A close commit with stale ledger status may be reconciled after its check passes.

4. Verify and repair state

• Trust no [ongoing] sub-task merely because files changed. Run its "done when" check. If it passes, mark it done and log verified on resume; otherwise return it to [todo] and redo it deliberately.
• Repair multiple ongoing items, GOAL.md/phase mismatches, missing reason suffixes, stale Last completed phase, and stale Handoff fields. The phase file wins status disagreements.
• If a phase is fully complete, close and commit it under the Goal Ledger Git contract. If not, retain the committed begin marker and continue its work.
• Append a resume event to GOAL.md and identify the evidence used.
• Run the validator bundled with the sibling goal-ledger skill as scripts/validate_goal_ledger.py --root . Repair ledger errors before continuing; record Git warnings in Handoff. If Python 3 is unavailable, check the section 2 invariants and Git contract manually.

5. Continue

Re-enter section 6 of the goal-ledger skill. Preserve its commit identity, phase checks, stop conditions, acceptance, and squash safeguards.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jpbaking
• Source: jpbaking/goal-ledger
• License: 0BSD

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.