damage-control

name	damage-control
description	Recovers broken agent state via crash recovery, context overflow, and merge conflict protocols. Use when an agent session fails or a worktree is corrupted.
alwaysApply	false
category	infrastructure
tags	["recovery","resilience","crash","context","conflicts","state"]
dependencies	["error-patterns"]
provides	{"infrastructure":["crash-recovery-protocol","context-overflow-protocol","merge-conflict-resolution","state-reconciliation"],"patterns":["damage-triage","recovery-checkpoints"]}
usage_patterns	["agent-crash-recovery","context-limit-handling","conflict-resolution","session-state-repair"]
complexity	intermediate
model_hint	standard
estimated_tokens	450
progressive_loading	true
modules	["modules/crash-recovery.md","modules/context-overflow.md","modules/merge-conflict-resolution.md","modules/state-reconciliation.md","modules/risk-assessment-checklist.md"]
role	library

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When To Use
• When NOT To Use
• Damage Triage
• Module Reference
• Integration Pattern
• Exit Criteria

Damage Control

Overview

Provides recovery protocols for agents that encounter broken state mid-session. Damage control covers four failure classes: agent crashes with partial work on disk, context window overflow that causes state loss, merge conflicts blocking forward progress, and general session state corruption requiring reconciliation.

The skill does not prevent failures. It defines what to do after one has already happened, so recovery is consistent, auditable, and does not silently discard work.

When To Use

• An agent process crashed and left files in an unknown state
• A session hit the context limit and cannot load prior decisions
• git merge or git rebase produced conflicts the agent cannot resolve automatically
• Observed state (files on disk, task list, git index) disagrees with expected state
• A downstream agent reports missing artifacts that should have been produced upstream

When NOT to Use

• Proactive risk assessment before work starts (use Skill(leyline:risk-classification) instead)
• Strategic architectural decisions after a failure (use Skill(attune:war-room) instead)
• Routine error handling within a single tool call (use Skill(leyline:error-patterns) instead)

Damage Triage

Use this decision tree to route to the correct module:

flowchart TD
    A[Failure detected] --> B{Agent process crashed\nor exited unexpectedly?}
    B -->|Yes| C[modules/crash-recovery.md]
    B -->|No| D{Context limit hit or\nprior decisions unavailable?}
    D -->|Yes| E[modules/context-overflow.md]
    D -->|No| F{git merge / rebase /\ncherry-pick conflicts?}
    F -->|Yes| G[modules/merge-conflict-resolution.md]
    F -->|No| H{State internally inconsistent?\ntask list vs disk vs git index}
    H -->|Yes| I[modules/state-reconciliation.md]
    H -->|No| J[No damage-control needed]

When multiple failure types overlap, start with state-reconciliation.md to establish a known baseline, then address the specific failure class.

Risk Assessment Checklist