11 A new chat starts empty, so write a handoff note

What people usually ask

Continue where we left off yesterday.

What comes back

A new chat holds no record of yesterday, so the assistant either says so or guesses a restart and redoes work that was finished.

Ask this instead

First, near the end of the working chat:
Before this chat fills up, write handoff.md for the next session on the thermocouple calibration write up. Under 40 lines, these headings in this order: where the work stands, files written with full paths, decisions made and why, the next three steps, open questions. Only what happened in this chat; nothing planned that was not agreed. Return the file in one code block.

Then, as the first message of the new chat:
Read handoff.md. Give me one line on what you understand the state of the work to be. Then do step 1 of the next steps only and stop. Do not start steps 2 or 3, and do not redo anything listed under files written.

Attach: handoff.md in the new chat, with the first message.

Why it works: The new chat starts with nothing from the old one, so the file is what carries the state across.