yoi/.yoi/tickets/open/20260607-022328-preserve-active-workflows-across-compaction/item.md

id	slug	title	status	kind	priority	labels	workflow_state	created_at	updated_at	assignee	legacy_ticket
20260607-022328-preserve-active-workflows-across-compaction	preserve-active-workflows-across-compaction	Preserve active workflows across compaction	open	task	P1	workflow compaction history orchestration	intake	2026-06-07T02:23:28Z	2026-06-07T02:23:28Z	null	null

Background

Long-running orchestration work often spans compaction. Workflow text can be strongly available in the turn where the workflow is invoked, but after compaction the durable state may only retain a loose summary. This can cause the agent to forget that it is still operating under workflow constraints such as worktree/reviewer/merge/commit handling from multi-agent-workflow and worktree-workflow.

The problem is not merely summarization quality: active workflow invocation state and workflow obligations should be represented durably enough to survive compaction.

Goal

Preserve active Workflow invocations and their operational obligations across compaction so long-running workflow-governed tasks continue to follow the invoked workflow after context pruning/compaction.

Requirements

• Represent user-invoked or otherwise active workflows as durable, typed history/state rather than only transient context text.
• Preserve at least:
  • workflow slug;
  • invocation source/time;
  • intended task/scope when available;
  • whether the workflow remains active or has completed;
  • concise current obligations/checkpoints relevant to the active workflow.
• Compaction must carry active workflow state forward explicitly.
• After compaction, context construction must be able to rehydrate active workflow guidance from durable state.
• The implementation must not inject workflow instructions into model context based only on turn-local/transient information that is absent from history/state.
• Workflow guidance after compaction should distinguish:
  • workflow availability/advertisement;
  • workflow currently active for this task.
• Decide and document whether rehydration uses the latest workflow body by slug or an invocation-time snapshot; make the choice explicit.
• Active workflow obligations should be cleared or marked completed when the workflow-governed task finishes, so stale workflow constraints do not leak into unrelated work.
• Include coverage for at least a long-running worktree/multi-agent style flow where compaction occurs between review delegation and merge/close handling.

Non-goals

• Rewriting workflow content itself.
• Solving all memory summarization quality issues.
• Automatically invoking workflows without user or orchestration intent.
• Making workflows immutable unless the snapshot/latest-body decision chooses that explicitly.

Acceptance criteria

• A workflow-governed task can cross compaction without losing the fact that /worktree-workflow or /multi-agent-workflow is active.
• The post-compaction context clearly distinguishes active workflow obligations from merely available resident workflows.
• Workflow instructions that affect model behavior are traceable to durable history/state.
• Stale active workflow state is cleared at task completion or explicit cancellation.