Compound
Use when a person says "compound", or when you finish a piece of work. The method turns what this session learned into records and knowledge the next session starts from, and leaves the person with a short list of what changed and what needs them.
Why
Every session should leave the next one shorter. The measure is the distance between a person's goal and the result: if the same question, fix or explanation is needed again next week, nothing compounded. Agents often finish the task in front of them and stop there. This pass is the part that makes the work last.
Inputs
The conversation: what the person asked for, what they corrected, what they decided, what was promised for later.
The record this work was claimed on, if there is one (a ticket, problem or tracker).
The documents you read or changed, and their recent version history.
The organization's own rules for what agents may do alone and what stays with a person (its AGENTS.md or equivalent).
Procedure
Run the four passes in order. Each item you find is either clear, and you do it, or not clear, and you ask.
1. Records
Owed work (anything said as "later", "follow-up", "next time", "remember") becomes a ticket with an owner and a next step, or is linked to the one that already holds it.
A person's answer or decision becomes a decision record, quoting their words and the date.
An open question nobody can answer yet becomes a problem record.
The record this session claimed is closed with its result, or gets the date it should next move and a one-line reason, and the claim is released.
A tracker line, chat message, memory note or pull request description only points at these records; it never holds the item.
2. Knowledge
What a future run needs goes into the document that owns the topic, as the current rule in present tense. Replace the stale sentence; do not append a correction next to it.
A document you found wrong is corrected in place, or gets a dated note when you cannot resolve it.
Repetition is the main signal that structure is missing: the same kind of task done several times, the same fix or correction more than once, edits that always go the same direction. Each is a candidate for a how-to document, a template, a stated constraint, a document type or a recurring routine. Read the version history of the documents involved: what people changed over time shows their real preferences better than what they said up front.
Prefer reshaping what exists over adding something next to it. Ask: if we had known this from the start, would the structure look different? One incident earns one general rule, not a narrow rule per symptom.
3. Cleanup
Archive documents, notes and trackers this session made obsolete, after their substance lives in the owner.
Close or re-date anything you opened and will not continue.
4. Sort, act and report
Clear, do it now: filing records, updating documentation you own or that the organization lets agents maintain, correcting facts, archiving your own obsolete work.
Not clear, ask: a new document type, changing or deleting someone else's document, public text, policy, money, sign-ins, anything the organization reserves for a person. Ask once, as a numbered list, each item with your recommended answer, so the person can reply with one line.
Report to the person in a few lines: what you recorded or changed (with links), what you archived, and the numbered questions.
Verification
Every "later", "follow-up" or "owed" in your final message names its record.
Every answer the person gave in this session is in a decision record.
The claimed record is closed or re-dated.
Nothing was created that duplicates an existing document or type.
Limits
The pass records and distills; it does not start new work the person did not ask for.
It follows the organization's authority rules and adds no second permission gate to work already authorized.
When the session produced nothing durable, say so in one line and stop.