Continuing a conversation with an agent — pointer

This is a POINTER, not a copy. Ruled 2026-08-20: an earlier version restated the tables and was a
second drifting copy. The canonical text is agents/rules/PROTO_VERIFY_DELEGATION.md. This file
exists only because that one is ~4,000 lines of append-only prose whose own header says the
directives were "buried there is how they stopped binding" — so the trigger lives here and the
content stays there.

Read these before resuming anything

The three env vars — the one thing NOT written down elsewhere as a command

OPENCLINXR_WORKER=1 GROK_SUBAGENTS=1 OPENCLINXR_RAW_GROK_SANCTIONED=1 \
  ~/.grok/bin/grok -p "<short delta>" --resume <id> --model <same> --output-format json --cwd <worktree>

Drop OPENCLINXR_WORKER=1 and the SessionStart docs-hygiene hook fires: the worktree fills with
docs/_archive/** and PROJECT_STATUS.md churn before the worker reads a word. That was an open
mystery for weeks (§9r, §11g) and the cause is a missing env var on the resume — §11p.

NEVER dispatch({ worktree: true, resume }) — it runs git reset --hard main + git clean -fd
before reattaching, destroying the work the resume exists to save. A bare grok -p --resume needs
contract-verify-cli afterwards, because only dispatch() writes a contract report (§11h).

Liveness

Sample ≥90 s and compare updates.jsonl growth. CPU misleads — a capture-heavy slice burns
wall-clock in subprocesses. Wedge signature: ~6 s CPU then flat. A fresh no-resume session is the
control that separates a dead thread from a dead harness.