Use cases
Hand engineering work across sessions
Use Nightshift’s on-disk contract to preserve objectives, decisions, and next actions across compaction, restart, or another coding host.
Answers: preserve coding-agent work across sessions · Updated
Write the outcome and acceptance evidence into the punch list, keep decisions in the parking lot, and let the receiving session read the same durable state. Conversation history becomes useful context, not the only source of truth.
What survives
The work state is plain files inside the Nightshift workspace.
- Approved punch-list items and gates
- Drafted later work
- Owner decisions and chosen defaults
- Snag dispositions
- Shift progress and recovery events
- Exact next action for an active walkthrough
Plan with one session, execute with another
The planning session writes precise outcomes and verification. The execution session starts from those files rather than trying to reconstruct intent from a summary.
- Keep the contract unchanged during the shift.
- Promote only approved work.
- Use local commits as durable implementation checkpoints.
Recovery is a special handoff
When a worker dies, the process lease and watchman make sure one replacement owns the active shift. The same punch list remains authoritative whether the original conversation resumes or a controlled fresh session takes over.
Start with a bounded prompt
This prompt names the outcome and preserves Nightshift’s review boundary. Paste it into the supported coding host from the project you want to change.
Move this objective, acceptance evidence, completed work, decisions, exact next action, and remaining verification into Nightshift's durable project files.What this workflow does not claim
- Conversation history remains context, not the authoritative work contract.
- Only one recovered process may own an active shift; normal helper sessions remain outside it.
Evidence and sources
These links support the released behavior, public outcomes, or problem language described on this page.