The session ends; the work does not
The most expensive failure in coding-agent workflows is often not a bad answer. It is a good session ending at the wrong time.
An agent may have explored a repository, changed three files, ruled out two approaches, and reached the last verification step. The next session sees a transcript or a short summary. It still has to reconstruct which parts are facts, which parts are guesses, and which parts remain unfinished.
That reconstruction is where continuity breaks. Work gets repeated. Evidence gets lost. A task that was nearly complete becomes a fresh conversation.
Continuity is a state problem
Coding-agent work is not just a stream of messages. It is a sequence of state changes. The useful record includes the current objective, ordered steps, changed files, commands already run, failed approaches, verification evidence, workspace drift, and the next action.
A transcript is valuable historical material, but it is a poor source of truth for an active task. It does not enforce state transitions or distinguish discussion from verification. A summary is easier to read, but it can hide the exact evidence needed to trust a claim.
What Termyte records
Termyte keeps task state, traces, checkpoints, resume packets, and handoffs in the local runtime. A session can checkpoint its current position before it ends. Another supported agent can request a resume packet that describes the current task rather than starting from an empty prompt.
The packet is intentionally bounded. It does not recreate the previous agent's entire context window. It gives the next agent enough structured information to inspect the repository, understand the current step, and decide what needs to be verified.
The research question
The question is not whether more context can be injected into a prompt. It can. The question is whether the context is current, relevant, and backed by evidence.
Our working hypothesis is that durable task state matters more than indiscriminate memory for unfinished engineering work. We are testing that through real handoffs, workspace drift, stale updates, and explicit verification events—not by treating a larger prompt as proof of continuity.
The practical limit
Termyte only knows what a configured integration captures. A checkpoint does not freeze a repository, and a handoff transfers task information rather than the previous agent's capabilities. The next agent still needs to inspect the workspace and make judgments.
Termyte makes the starting state explicit. It does not make the work automatic.