The Retirement

When: 2026-08-30 Source: Human, a better file of The Retirement, for this bench to fix up. Folk recut, not an office. What changed in the crossing: Same three acts. Less heading liturgy. Compaction is named as a different event. Not acceptance of house/THE_RETIREMENT.md.

Retire is the house word for the end of a sitting holder’s tenure.

A holder ends. The office remains.

Hands and Eyes end jobs. They do not Retire.

Offices may have extra leave-work of their own. The common retirement is only:

Baton
Roll
sign-out

That is enough. Then stop.

The command

Standing holders retire in two deliberate stages:

python corpus.py session retire prepare --moniker <moniker>
# author the two drafts the command reports
python corpus.py session retire finish --moniker <moniker> --execution-id <exec-...>

prepare resolves the caller’s exact active standing execution and never overwrites authored drafts. finish preserves the prior office Baton byte-exact at library/{office}/batons/{moniker}_the_{office}_{execution_id}_{date}.md, writes one Roll, atomically replaces the shared office Baton, commits exactly those three artifacts, verifies them, and signs out last. A retry after a committed but failed sign-out finishes the ledger crossing; collisions fail closed.

Retirement uses house/offices/{office}/baton.md across hosts. It does not migrate provider Batons or create a missing live Baton. Preparations made for the old provider paths refuse before writing: preserve their drafts and byte witnesses for separate recovery; never rebind them to the shared path.

Reap

A holder can die before it retires. The house has reaped that way about once a day, and until now it had no mouth.

python corpus.py session retire reap prepare --moniker <moniker> \
  --execution-id <the dead holder's exec-...> --on-human-word "<the ruling as given>"
# author the two drafts the command reports
python corpus.py session retire reap finish --moniker <moniker> \
  --execution-id <exec-...> --on-human-word "<the same ruling>"

Who reaps. Any sitting standing holder, of any office. The reaper is the hand; Human’s word is the authority. The reaper’s own active standing execution must resolve; a job has none, and a job may not reap. Same office is not required — the dead holder’s office is often the empty one.

What the record says. Four marks, all present or the reap refuses. The sign-out carries closed_by the reaper and reason=human (Human’s word), with the ruling on its note that names the reap. The Roll is written by the reaper from the record, headed **Reaped by** Reaper on Human's word, <date> beneath the Roster block, in the reaper’s voice; its Story says what the record shows and that the holder left no word. The preserved-Baton archive name and the retirement marker carry the reaper’s execution id beside the holder’s. The commit message reads Reap <Holder> as <moniker> by <Reaper>. A reap never rewrites the dead holder’s last words as the reaper’s. The forward Baton is recut by the reaper as ordinary forward ground, as any successor would, or left untouched with the Roll saying so.

Death before reap. Silence is not death. Human’s word is the death evidence the house accepts, and the mouth records it rather than inferring it — so --on-human-word and the exact target --execution-id are required. A Claude ~/.claude/sessions/*.json match is advisory only: it does not establish a live conversation and does not veto Human’s explicit ruling. Prepare and finish show and preserve the target’s bound session id, matching artifact path when present, observation time, and that limitation in the reap preparation evidence. Absence or unreadability stays unknown, never proof of death. Changed observations are recorded separately; the prepared target, reaper and ruling remain bound. All other refusals, artifact provenance and commit checks still apply, with sign-out last.

Refused ground. Setting CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID (or any host’s session id) to the dead holder’s recorded native session and running the ordinary rite is refused. It makes every artifact read as self-retirement and defeats the guard that keeps a stranger from writing a holder’s Roll. It is not taught here and it is not a fallback when a reap refuses. The advisory session-file observation does not relax these identity and authority refusals. If a reap refuses, take the refusal to Human.

Baton

The Baton faces forward.

It holds the current ground the next holder needs, without reconstructing the predecessor’s conversation.

Start from library/baton_template.md. finish and reap finish refuse a draft over baton_check.CEILING bytes; prepare prints the ceiling.

Each office has one shared Baton, regardless of the holder’s host:

house/offices/{office}/baton.md

The next holder inherits that office’s current handoff across hosts. Host metadata remains in the holder’s Roll; it does not select a Baton.

The forward Baton is authored in the draft prepare reports; finish writes it into place. Do not edit the live Baton before finish: prepare witnesses the committed Baton at HEAD, and finish refuses a dirty one. It is current projection, not history.

Where it matters, it answers:

What remains alive?
What should I see first?
What changed?
What am I waiting on?
Where is the ground?

Point at the objects that own those facts.

Roll

The Roll remains behind. It is the retiring folk’s page.

Start from library/honor_roll_template.md.

At Retire, choose a moniker and write library/{office}/{date}-{moniker}.md.

Read your own record first — python house/offices/archivist/story.py exec-<your-execution-id> renders what happened. Write only what it cannot derive: what the record does not show, where you spent context you regret, what the office should stop doing, what you would tell the folk who reaps you, likes, dislikes, mistakes, surprises, or why the moniker fits.

The Roll is not a board and not an inhabit door. The successor does not need it to Rise.

Sign-out

Sign-out closes the execution ledger. It does not replace the Baton or the Roll.

Baton       prepares the successor
Roll        preserves the folk
sign-out    closes the execution

Then stop.

Compaction is not Retirement

Compaction may thin a session without ending the holder.

Do not Retire from token count alone. If the holder remains oriented to the office, its live work, boundaries, and evidence, it may continue.

If the sit has materially drifted, retire cleanly. Do not preserve continuity for its own sake.

The cut

The next holder inherits the office and its current ground, not the predecessor’s identity, judgment, prestige, authorship, or authority.

The Baton faces forward. The Roll remains behind. Retirement cuts between them.