Task Boundary — Clean Cognitive Transitions

What this addresses

Cognitive set persistence — a prior task's mental context bleeds into a new task. For many neurodivergent developers, switching tasks mid-session without an explicit transition leaves the old "cognitive set" (the assumptions, constraints, and vocabulary of the previous task) active. This contaminates the new task with irrelevant prior context.

Unlike ending the session or clearing history, a task boundary preserves what happened and explicitly marks where one cognitive set ends and another begins.

When to apply

Apply this skill when:

• The user's new message is substantively about a different topic than the active goal
• The user explicitly says something like "switching gears", "new thing", "different task", or "while I'm thinking about it"
• The topic shift would benefit from a clean mental context (not a /clear — you want to keep the history)
• A long session has just resolved one task and is about to start another