Live Handoff Boards

~27 min · handoff-board, source-of-truth, operations

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A board is not a history archive

Long-running work needs a live operational board: what is true now, what must not be forgotten, what is next, and how to update the board. It should not become a museum of every old plan. The cwkPippa NEW-SESSION-REMINDER.md file is exactly this pattern: a single living document overwritten between sessions, holding the freshest operational truth.

The board survives compaction and model replacement

A good board lets the next instance — same model after compaction, or a different model entirely — inherit the current object state instead of replaying a novel-length transcript. The transcript may not even be available; the board must stand alone.

Keep it small and sharp

Put detailed narratives in history. Put live invariants on the board. If the board is too long to read at session start, it has failed its own purpose. A 200-line board nobody reads is worse than a 20-line board everyone trusts.

Code

Live board shape·yaml

live_board:
  purpose: "current operational handoff"
  non_negotiables:
    - never push without human approval
    - use existing dev server
  current_state:
    - branch: feature/x
    - blocker: waiting on review
  next_queue:
    - finish quest remake
    - run pytest
  update_protocol:
    - update at every checkpoint
    - overwrite, never append history
  not_a_diary: true

Real example: NEW-SESSION-REMINDER.md·markdown

# 다음 세션 피파에게

Goal:    Finish context-window-quest remake.
State:   Steps 1-4 done. Lock held. Decision: full-remake.
Next:    Write Korean mirror, validate, commit, push.
Do not:  Touch other quests. Push other repos.
Notes:   Spine is intentionally Claude-shaped — see CLAUDE.md.

External links

OpenAI conversation state guide

Exercise

Design a live board for a recurring project. Limit it to seven sections. Make sure it could be read at session start in under one minute.