A two-minute close-out that turns a long, drifting session into a clean starting point for the next one. Use it instead of letting one conversation run all day.
When a session has been going for a while and answers are getting looser. When you are about to stop for the day mid-task. Before you hand a piece of work to someone else. Any time you notice yourself re-explaining something you already covered in the same conversation.
Nothing to prepare. Run it inside the session you want to close, before you leave it.
We are closing this session. Write me a handoff so the next session can
pick up cleanly without me re-explaining anything.
Produce four short sections, nothing else:
DECIDED. Everything we settled in this conversation, as statements of
fact. If we changed our mind partway, record the final position only and
note in one line what it replaced.
HOLDING. Constraints and assumptions we agreed to work within, including
anything I said not to do.
OPEN. Questions we raised and did not resolve, with enough context that
someone reading this cold would understand why each one matters.
NEXT. The single thing that should happen first next time.
Rules: use my words where I used them. Do not include anything we merely
discussed without concluding. Do not add advice. If you are unsure whether
something was decided or just floated, put it under OPEN, not DECIDED.
Run it, read the DECIDED section, and correct anything wrong before you save it. That thirty-second check is the whole value, because the summary is about to become the authority for the next session and an error here compounds.
Start the next session by pasting it in first.
Something you could hand to a colleague who was not in the room. Four short sections, no padding, no restating of the conversation, and an OPEN section that is honest about what is unresolved rather than tidying it away.
Running it and not reading it. Letting things drift into DECIDED that were only discussed. Treating the handoff as a record of the conversation rather than a brief for the next one. Length. If it is longer than a page, it will not get pasted.
The instruction that does the most work is the last one: when in doubt, put it under OPEN. Models resolve ambiguity toward confidence, and a handoff that quietly promotes a maybe into a decision is how a small early error becomes next week's rework.
Source: Build to Thrive, The AI Blueprint, week of August 10, 2026.