Save working context. Captures git state, decisions made, and remaining
Scanned 5/27/2026
Install to Claude Code
npx -y skills add charlieviettq/awesome-agent-skill --skill context-save --agent claude-codeInstalls into .claude/skills of the current project.
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---
name: context-save
description: Save working context. Captures git state, decisions made, and remaining
work so any future session can pick up without losing a beat. Use when asked to
"save progress", "save state", "context save", or "save my work". Pair with /context-restore
to resume later. Formerly /checkpoint — renamed because Claude Code treats /checkpoint
as a native rewind alias in current environments, which was shadowing this skill.
(gstack)
---
## Skill routing
When the user's request matches an available skill, invoke it via the Skill tool. When in doubt, invoke the skill.
Key routing rules:
- Product ideas/brainstorming → invoke /office-hours
- Strategy/scope → invoke /plan-ceo-review
- Architecture → invoke /plan-eng-review
- Design system/plan review → invoke /design-consultation or /plan-design-review
- Full review pipeline → invoke /autoplan
- Bugs/errors → invoke /investigate
- QA/testing site behavior → invoke /qa or /qa-only
- Code review/diff check → invoke /review
- Visual polish → invoke /design-review
- Ship/deploy/PR → invoke /ship or /land-and-deploy
- Save progress → invoke /context-save
- Resume context → invoke /context-restore
```
Then commit the change: `git add CLAUDE.md && git commit -m "chore: add gstack skill routing rules to CLAUDE.md"`
If B: run `~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config set routing_declined true` and say they can re-enable with `gstack-config set routing_declined false`.
This only happens once per project. Skip if `HAS_ROUTING` is `yes` or `ROUTING_DECLINED` is `true`.
If `VENDORED_GSTACK` is `yes`, warn once via AskUserQuestion unless `~/.gstack/.vendoring-warned-$SLUG` exists:
> This project has gstack vendored in `.claude/skills/gstack/`. Vendoring is deprecated.
> Migrate to team mode?
Options:
- A) Yes, migrate to team mode now
- B) No, I'll handle it myself
If A:
1. Run `git rm -r .claude/skills/gstack/`
2. Run `echo '.claude/skills/gstack/' >> .gitignore`
3. Run `~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-team-init required` (or `optional`)
4. Run `git add .claude/ .gitignore CLAUDE.md && git commit -m "chore: migrate gstack from vendored to team mode"`
5. Tell the user: "Done. Each developer now runs: `cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack && ./setup --team`"
If B: say "OK, you're on your own to keep the vendored copy up to date."
Always run (regardless of choice):
```bash
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-slug 2>/dev/null)" 2>/dev/null || true
touch ~/.gstack/.vendoring-warned-${SLUG:-unknown}
```
If marker exists, skip.
If `SPAWNED_SESSION` is `"true"`, you are running inside a session spawned by an
AI orchestrator (e.g., OpenClaw). In spawned sessions:
- Do NOT use AskUserQuestion for interactive prompts. Auto-choose the recommended option.
- Do NOT run upgrade checks, telemetry prompts, routing injection, or lake intro.
- Focus on completing the task and reporting results via prose output.
- End with a completion report: what shipped, decisions made, anything uncertain.
## Detect command
Parse the user's input to determine the mode:
- `/context-save` or `/context-save <title>` → **Save**
- `/context-save list` → **List**
If the user provides a title after the command (e.g., `/context-save auth refactor`),
use it as the title. Otherwise, infer a title from the current work.
If the user types `/context-save resume` or `/context-save restore`, tell them:
"Use `/context-restore` instead — save and restore are separate skills now."
---
## Save flow
### Step 1: Gather state
```bash
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-slug 2>/dev/null)" && mkdir -p ~/.gstack/projects/$SLUG
```
Collect the current working state:
```bash
echo "=== BRANCH ==="
git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null
echo "=== STATUS ==="
git status --short 2>/dev/null
echo "=== DIFF STAT ==="
git diff --stat 2>/dev/null
echo "=== STAGED DIFF STAT ==="
git diff --cached --stat 2>/dev/null
echo "=== RECENT LOG ==="
git log --oneline -10 2>/dev/null
```
### Step 2: Summarize context
Using the gathered state plus your conversation history, produce a summary covering:
1. **What's being worked on** — the high-level goal or feature
2. **Decisions made** — architectural choices, trade-offs, approaches chosen and why
3. **Remaining work** — concrete next steps, in priority order
4. **Notes** — anything a future session needs to know (gotchas, blocked items,
open questions, things that were tried and didn't work)
If the user provided a title, use it. Otherwise, infer a concise title (3-6 words)
from the work being done.
### Step 3: Compute session duration
Try to determine how long this session has been active:
```bash
if [ -n "$_TEL_START" ]; then
START_EPOCH="$_TEL_START"
elif [ -n "$PPID" ]; then
START_EPOCH=$(ps -o lstart= -p $PPID 2>/dev/null | xargs -I{} date -jf "%c" "{}" "+%s" 2>/dev/null || echo "")
fi
if [ -n "$START_EPOCH" ]; then
NOW=$(date +%s)
DURATION=$((NOW - START_EPOCH))
echo "SESSION_DURATION_S=$DURATION"
else
echo "SESSION_DURATION_S=unknown"
fi
```
If the duration cannot be determined, omit the `session_duration_s` field from the
saved file.
### Step 4: Write saved-context file
Compute the path in bash (NOT in the LLM prompt) so user-supplied titles can't
inject shell metacharacters into any subsequent command. The sanitizer is an
allowlist: only `a-z 0-9 - .` survive.
```bash
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-slug 2>/dev/null)" && mkdir -p ~/.gstack/projects/$SLUG
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-paths)"
CHECKPOINT_DIR="$GSTACK_STATE_ROOT/projects/$SLUG/checkpoints"
mkdir -p "$CHECKPOINT_DIR"
TIMESTAMP=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
# Bash-side title sanitize. Pass the raw title as $1 when running this block.
# Example: TITLE_RAW="wintermute progress" bash -c '...'
RAW="${TITLE_RAW:-untitled}"
# Lowercase, collapse whitespace to hyphens, strip to allowlist, cap length.
TITLE_SLUG=$(printf '%s' "$RAW" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -s ' \t' '-' | tr -cd 'a-z0-9.-' | cut -c1-60)
TITLE_SLUG="${TITLE_SLUG:-untitled}"
# Collision-safe filename: if ${TIMESTAMP}-${SLUG}.md already exists (same-second
# double save with same title), append a short random suffix. Filenames are
# append-only — never overwrite.
FILE="${CHECKPOINT_DIR}/${TIMESTAMP}-${TITLE_SLUG}.md"
if [ -e "$FILE" ]; then
SUFFIX=$(LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'a-z0-9' < /dev/urandom 2>/dev/null | head -c 4 || printf '%04x' "$$")
FILE="${CHECKPOINT_DIR}/${TIMESTAMP}-${TITLE_SLUG}-${SUFFIX}.md"
fi
echo "CHECKPOINT_DIR=$CHECKPOINT_DIR"
echo "TIMESTAMP=$TIMESTAMP"
echo "FILE=$FILE"
```
The on-disk directory name is `checkpoints/` (not `contexts/`) — this is a legacy
path kept so existing saved files remain loadable. Users never see it.
Write the file to the `$FILE` path printed above (use the exact string — do not
reconstruct it in the LLM layer).
The file format:
```markdown
---
status: in-progress
branch: {current branch name}
timestamp: {ISO-8601 timestamp, e.g. 2026-04-18T14:30:00-07:00}
session_duration_s: {computed duration, omit if unknown}
files_modified:
- path/to/file1
- path/to/file2
---
## Working on: {title}
### Summary
{1-3 sentences describing the high-level goal and current progress}
### Decisions Made
{Bulleted list of architectural choices, trade-offs, and reasoning}
### Remaining Work
{Numbered list of concrete next steps, in priority order}
### Notes
{Gotchas, blocked items, open questions, things tried that didn't work}
```
The `files_modified` list comes from `git status --short` (both staged and unstaged
modified files). Use relative paths from the repo root.
After writing, confirm to the user:
```
CONTEXT SAVED
════════════════════════════════════════
Title: {title}
Branch: {branch}
File: {path to saved file}
Modified: {N} files
Duration: {duration or "unknown"}
════════════════════════════════════════
Restore later with /context-restore.
```
---
## List flow
### Step 1: Gather saved contexts
```bash
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-slug 2>/dev/null)" && mkdir -p ~/.gstack/projects/$SLUG
eval "$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-paths)"
CHECKPOINT_DIR="$GSTACK_STATE_ROOT/projects/$SLUG/checkpoints"
if [ -d "$CHECKPOINT_DIR" ]; then
echo "CHECKPOINT_DIR=$CHECKPOINT_DIR"
# Use find + sort instead of ls -1t: filename YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS prefix is the
# canonical order (stable across copies/rsync; mtime is not), and empty-result
# behavior is clean (no files → no output, no "lists cwd" fallback).
find "$CHECKPOINT_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -name "*.md" -type f 2>/dev/null | sort -r
else
echo "NO_CHECKPOINTS"
fi
```
### Step 2: Display table
**Default behavior:** Show saved contexts for the **current branch** only.
If the user passes `--all` (e.g., `/context-save list --all`), show contexts
from **all branches**.
Read the frontmatter of each file to extract `status`, `branch`, and
`timestamp`. Parse the title from the filename (the part after the timestamp).
Present as a table:
```
SAVED CONTEXTS ({branch} branch)
════════════════════════════════════════
# Date Title Status
─ ────────── ─────────────────────── ───────────
1 2026-04-18 auth-refactor in-progress
2 2026-04-17 api-pagination completed
3 2026-04-15 db-migration-setup in-progress
════════════════════════════════════════
```
If `--all` is used, add a Branch column:
```
SAVED CONTEXTS (all branches)
════════════════════════════════════════
# Date Title Branch Status
─ ────────── ─────────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────
1 2026-04-18 auth-refactor feat/auth in-progress
2 2026-04-17 api-pagination main completed
3 2026-04-15 db-migration-setup feat/db-migration in-progress
════════════════════════════════════════
```
If there are no saved contexts, tell the user: "No saved contexts yet. Run
`/context-save` to save your current working state."
---
## Important Rules
- **Never modify code.** This skill only reads state and writes the context file.
- **Always include the branch name** in frontmatter — critical for cross-branch
`/context-restore`.
- **Saved files are append-only.** Never overwrite or delete existing files. Each
save creates a new file.
- **Infer, don't interrogate.** Use git state and conversation context to fill in
the file. Only use AskUserQuestion if the title genuinely cannot be inferred.
- **This is a gstack skill, not a Claude Code built-in.** When the user types
`/context-save`, invoke this skill via the Skill tool. The old `/checkpoint`
name collided with Claude Code's native `/rewind` alias — the rename fixed that.
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