Superpower: Agent Resurrection¶

Problem¶

A coding agent loses its chat window. A new session starts. The next agent must:

rediscover what the goal was
find the latest failure
know what was already tried and failed
not repeat the stale fix

Without DevCD, this requires the user to re-paste context or the agent to rediscover it from the repository — if the information exists anywhere at all.

DevCD Capability¶

DevCD derives a policy-filtered continuity handoff from locally recorded events. For the shortest proof, that starts as an Action Packet; the broader handoff and passport layers remain available when an agent needs more context than the first warm-start surface.

The packet is produced from the local event ledger with no remote call and no model inference.

It includes:

Field	What it tells the next agent
`active_goal`	What the work is aimed at
`last_failure`	The most recent visible failure
`last_attempted_fix`	What was tried before this session ended
`why_attempt_failed`	Why the last fix did not resolve the blocker
`do_not_repeat`	Explicit list of stale or failed strategies
`suggested_next_action`	Concrete next step derived from visible events
`withheld_context`	Policy-safe summaries for signals that were denied

The next agent starts from this packet instead of from zero.

Demo Command¶

Run the shortest resurrection-style proof against the checked-in fixture:

bash devcd agentic action-packet-demo --events examples/agentic-action-packet/sample-events.jsonl devcd agentic action-packet-demo --events examples/agentic-action-packet/sample-events.jsonl --json

Run the broader compatibility handoff demo against the resurrection fixture:

bash devcd context handoff-demo --events examples/agent-resurrection/sample-events.jsonl devcd context handoff-demo --events examples/agent-resurrection/sample-events.jsonl --json

For daily use, generate the live policy-filtered Agent Passport from the configured local ledger without passing a fixture file:

bash devcd context passport devcd context passport --json --surface coding-agent --pack developer

If the ledger is empty, the passport still renders safely and includes concrete next commands for recording a goal or converting a local pytest failure report.

The expected handoff packet is checked in at examples/agent-resurrection/handoff-packet.md. The expected machine-readable packet is checked in at examples/agent-resurrection/handoff-packet.json and documented by schemas/devcd-agent-handoff-packet.schema.json.

Before/after comparison — shows what a fresh agent knows without DevCD versus with a policy-filtered handoff:

```bash

With DevCD¶

devcd context handoff-demo --events examples/before-after-agent-continuity/sample-events.jsonl ```

Read examples/before-after-agent-continuity/without-devcd.md for the baseline.

Agent-switch demo — coding agent and review agent receive surface-specific views from the same local events:

bash devcd context handoff-demo --events examples/agent-switch/sample-events.jsonl --surface coding-agent devcd context handoff-demo --events examples/agent-switch/sample-events.jsonl --surface review-agent

Handoff Packet Structure¶

The broader compatibility packet is rendered as Markdown by the CLI. The resurrection section looks like:

```text

Last attempt¶

failure: make check still fails: do_not_repeat is absent (task/test_failure)

Last failure¶

make check still fails: do_not_repeat is absent

Last attempted fix¶

Added only a Last failure section to the markdown renderer

why_attempt_failed¶

The latest failure happened after the attempted fix, so the fix did not resolve the blocker: make check still fails: do_not_repeat is absent

do_not_repeat¶

Do not repeat the last attempted fix unchanged: Added only a Last failure section to the markdown renderer

Suggested next action¶

Add a first-class resurrection context before rendering ```

The packet is produced by _resurrection_context() in packages/devcd-core/src/devcd/slices/ambient_context/service.py.

MCP clients can read continuity data through two read-only stdio resources:

devcd://context/continuity-packet — domain-neutral Continuity Packet (developer pack by default; includes intent, artifacts, attempts, blockers, do_not_repeat, suggested_next_steps, withheld-context metadata)
devcd://context/agent-handoff-packet — legacy developer handoff JSON contract (kept for backward compatibility with existing integrations)

To create local events from a concrete pytest failure report before generating a handoff, use:

bash devcd recipe pytest-failure --input examples/event-source-recipes/pytest-failure/input.json

Policy-Safe Withholding¶

Sensitive signals — note content, test output payloads, browser URLs — are denied by the default policy. They appear in the packet as withheld_context entries. No payload content is exposed.

Example withheld entry in the output: