Self-rotation & digests

Self-rotation (warden handoff --retire, alias warden rotate)

Run inside an agent session to retire a long-lived, context-heavy agent and hand off to a fresh successor in the same workdir/worktree. This is the retire mode of the unified handoff verb; warden rotate is an exact alias. Phase 1 (writing the handoff file + resume prompt) is driven by the /warden skill; on confirmation the agent spawns its successor and reaps itself.

warden handoff --retire --confirm \
  --resume-file "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/warden-rotate-handoff-$WARDEN_SESSION_ID.md" \
  --resume-prompt "Continue the migration from where the notes leave off"
# `warden rotate --confirm …` is an exact alias.

• The handoff file uses a unique, per-agent temp path ($TMPDIR keyed on $WARDEN_SESSION_ID), so concurrent agents rotating at the same time never overwrite each other’s notes. The successor deletes it once it has read it, and /tmp self-clears as a backstop.
• Spawn-before-reap is fail-safe — if the successor fails to spawn, the current agent keeps running.
• Rotation reuses the worktree by cwd and never removes it (a compile-time invariant: the rotator interface omits worktree removal).
• --retire is mutually exclusive with --to — retire reaps the caller, while the delegate / --to modes keep it running.

Want to keep the conversation, not just the task?

Rotate/handoff carry the task into a fresh agent but drop the conversation. To branch an agent’s recorded session (its conversation/reasoning) sideways into a new agent while the source keeps running, use warden fork — a Codex-only superpower.

Completion digest (warden digest)

Summarize what an agent accomplished — files touched, branch, number of turns, and a short narrative (best-effort, via claude -p). Also available as a web Digest panel and, in the cockpit, the d key (opens a scrollable digest for the selected agent).

warden digest PROJ-350
warden digest PROJ-350 --json