wind-down

You can checkpoint your session state by recording in-progress task status and updating tracking logs before pausing. This captures current work progress so the next session can resume immediately from the exact point where context was compacted.

The best way to commit only touched files is using git-safe persistence, which identifies and commits only the files modified during the current coding session. This preserves your changes cleanly without overcommitting unrelated work from other tasks.

Task completion cleanup for AI coding agents involves marking work complete, updating tracking documents, and clearing lingering in-progress context. This ensures project logs reflect the actual finished state and no stale tasks remain in the session.

Yes, tracking logs and todo files are required to effectively checkpoint your coding session. The checkpointing process applies to Claude Code workflows that update session records and status documents to preserve continuity across runs.

Yes, you can recover session progress after context compaction if you saved session state beforehand. By checkpointing progress and committing touched files, the next session reads the orientation context and resumes from the saved tracking logs.

You should not use a wind-down checkpoint if your workflow lacks tracking logs or status documents to update. Without these session records and orientation context, there is no persistent state to capture for the next run.