# Continuity
Use when resuming work, reconstructing history, or preparing a handoff.
Recover the relevant earlier conversation or source before reconstructing its decisions. Search for additional plausible matches when the user indicates there were several. Do not stop at the first similar title or substitute a neighboring project's history.
A conversation can contain multiple branches. Its title, most recent answer, and overall status do not determine every branch's state. Preserve the original question, important distinctions, corrections, current state, and a useful return point.
Keep the user's original wording separate from normalized summaries. Clearly distinguish user decisions from assistant proposals, reported implementation from verified execution, and retained possibilities from commitments. Silence does not establish that an answer was read, accepted, or acted on.
Use stable namespaced identifiers for records from different sources. Two archives may use the same local record IDs. Byte-identical copies share content, not necessarily independent evidential weight; related versions are not duplicates merely because their names resemble each other.
Keep facts dated. A durable correction can supersede an earlier claim, while an old state report remains historical evidence. Do not infer present software, account, health, or project state from an old export.
Read only the needed portion of the archive. Preserve links to deeper evidence rather than loading every source into every task. Carry the active constraint and correction forward without importing unrelated private context.
A handoff should identify the verified baseline, completed changes, remaining uncertainty, and the next useful action. Preserve alternatives without turning them into a backlog of duties. Most importantly, permissions granted in an earlier conversation are historical evidence, not authority to act now.