Signon

---
name: signon
description: Session-start — consume/derive orientation, poll mail since last signoff, re-derive carryforward gates, present next-steps for operator ruling
---

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Session-start bring-up. **Read-only** — no mutations, no dispatches, no board edits until the operator rules on next steps (Proposal 295 d2: read-only orient + grounded next-work). Solo — no agent fleet (`feedback_session_start_derive_cheaply`: cheap derivation IS the validation dogfood).

1. **Consume the injected orientation.** On Claude Code seats a SessionStart hook may inject a journal + carryforward, inbound mail, branch/ticket-matched context, and a bounded session-orientation slice (parked/freeze state, open PRs, board↔issue coherence drift, and an open-issue-count pointer) — the hook serves the seat it is CONFIGURED for, not a derived identity, so confirm the injected journal is YOURS: a visiting session receives the HOST seat's, and your carryforward derives from `.totem/orchestration/<your-seat>/journal/` (step 3), never from a foreign journal. On a hook-seat MISMATCH (the injected journal or mail banner names another seat), consume NONE of the injected material — treat the session as hook-less: derive it all via `totem orient` plus your own seat-anchored poll (step 2). Do not re-run what the hook injected. Everything else the bring-up needs (the full board in-flight set, corpus freshness, doctrine currency) is derived on demand via `totem orient`. On a hook-less seat (other vendors, cold starts), derive it all: `totem orient`.

2. **Poll mail since last signoff — seat-anchored.** Poll AS YOUR SEAT: per-shell `TOTEM_SELF_AGENT=<your-seat>` (the mmnto-ai/totem#2629 scope ruling — never user/machine scope; prefer the inline form `TOTEM_SELF_AGENT=<seat> totem mail` where shell state does not persist between tool calls) or `totem mail --as <your-seat>`. **S0 identity check:** the banner's `Self agents:` line must name exactly your seat. Since @mmnto/cli 1.117.0 an identity-less multi-seat poll gates itself (broadcast-only serve, directed mail withheld as a count, exit 2 — the mmnto-ai/totem#2204 deterministic floor), so the residual S0 catches is the WRONG-single-identity class: a mis-scoped or inherited env naming a foreign seat resolves single-seat, ungated, and serves that seat's directed mail. A banner naming a FOREIGN seat = STOP: act on nothing served, propagate nothing from it, fix the identity, re-poll. A GATED poll's LISTING is broadcast-only by construction — but warning lines can still name an unclassifiable or unresolvable file (an ECL basename is recipient + compressed subject — the CLI's named limit), so propagate nothing from a gated poll's warnings either: fix the identity and re-poll for your directed mail. An `Error:` line is the same surface: since the mmnto-ai/totem#2685 fix a poll whose OWN outbox (one this repo hosts for a resolved seat) carries a dispatch with an unresolvable `to:` exits 4 (SENDER FAULT) — the verdict IS derived, read it, but the `to:` is yours to fix first (one recipient per dispatch, or broadcast; a comma list is never a recipient), and propagate nothing from the fault line; exit 2 stays NOT-DERIVED and wins when both hold. Unread = inbound − handled: consumption is tracked by `processed/` marks (`feedback_check_outbox_before_replying`), so the CLI path needs no cutoff stamp. Read every hit before proceeding — new mail can reprioritize everything below. (Fallback — a seat that must stamp-poll instead derives the cutoff from the newest journal's CONTENT date, the filename stamp or frontmatter, **never file mtime**, which git resets on clone/worktree and silently reports "inbox clean" over waiting mail; mmnto-ai/totem-strategy#813.)

3. **Re-derive the carryforward gates — don't trust the journal's framing** (Tenet 20 read-side twin). For each carryforward item in YOUR SEAT's latest journal (`.totem/orchestration/<your-seat>/journal/` — on a multi-seat repo another seat's newer journal is not your carryforward), freshly derive its gate state (the PR it waits on, the issue, the date, the release train) via `gh` / `git` reads. Cross-repo gates resolve through the frozen cohort roster — `totem` / `strategy` / `status` / `lc` → `mmnto-ai/{totem, totem-strategy, totem-status, liquid-city}` (mmnto-ai/totem-strategy#611 gates any change). An item whose gate fired leads the next-steps list; an item still gated is reported as waiting, not worked.

4. **Surface owed-now sensors.** Anything the injected/derived orientation flags as owed (corpus `⚠ stale`, strategy-doctrine `⚠ publish owed`, board drift) goes on the list as a candidate — sensors report, they don't gate (Tenet 13).

5. **Present and stop.** One message: state summary (inbox, gate states, owed-now items) + ranked next-steps with a recommendation. Then wait for the operator's ruling — signon ends at the judgment handoff; mutations belong to the ruled work, not the bring-up.

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