Use cases Project Resume
Use case

The handoff you
never have to write.

Every developer pays an orientation tax: the time spent reconstructing where you were before you write a single line of code.

Tenure generates the handoff automatically, so you can pick up where you left off without re-explaining anything.

The problem

This is a real daily cost. Nobody tracks it.

Context switching between repos isn't free. Neither is returning after a vacation, picking up someone else's ticket, or dipping into a project mid-sprint. The mental work of reconstructing "what state is this work in?" is invisible in velocity metrics and untracked in standups, but developers pay it every single time.

🔁

Returning after time away

You context-switched to another project for two weeks. Now you're back. Which branch were you on? What was the half-finished thing? What had you decided about the auth flow? You have to re-read your own code to remember.

🎟️

Picking up someone else's ticket

You're handed a ticket mid-sprint. The description says "add rate limiting to the API." It doesn't say where rate limiting lives, what pattern the team uses, or which service owns it. You spend 30 minutes finding out.

🗂️

Multiple repos, all day

You're a solo dev bouncing between three repos. Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code: none of them remember where you were in any of them. You re-explain the same context over and over across sessions and tools.

📋

The AGENTS.md trap

You tried keeping context in AGENTS.md, .cursorrules, or a markdown file. It worked for two weeks. Then code changed, the file didn't, and now agents confidently follow stale instructions. The community calls this context rot. Maintenance becomes a second job.

🔄

The handoff you never wrote

You meant to leave notes before switching to the other repo. You didn't. Two weeks later you're reading your own commit messages trying to remember what "fix auth thing" meant. The context is gone. You start over.

✍️

The handoff ritual that requires discipline

You built a system: write a handover doc at the end of every session, then /clear and resume from it next time. It works when you remember. Most sessions don't end cleanly. Tenure writes the handoff whether you remembered to or not.

The orientation tax isn't laziness. It's the cost of tools with no memory.
Project Resume

Open the repo. Tenure already knows where you were.

When you return to a project, Tenure surfaces a reconstructed summary of your last working session, directly in VS Code. No prompting required. No markdown to maintain. Built from the signals already flowing through Tenure as you work.

Tenure — Project Resume
⬡ tenure-site Last active 13 days ago
src/pages/use-case/project-resume.astro 4 visits
src/pages/use-case/vscode.astro 2 visits
src/layouts/Base.astro 1 visit
decision Project Resume uses last N files, not session boundaries
preference Orientation tax is the core concept — name it early in the hero
decision Jira integration is roadmap — tease it, don't promise it
"How is CommandCode positioning against VS Code?"
"What are devs searching for around AI context across tools?"
"Write the Project Resume use-case page for tenureai.dev"
1. Add the Resume mockup section to the page
2. Wire up the VS Code sidebar button
3. Add internal link from vscode.astro → this page

● Built from file activity, beliefs, and audit log turns. No telemetry beyond what Tenure already collects. ● Every bullet is traceable to a source event. ● Click "Resume in Chat" to open your AI client pre-loaded with this context.

How it works

Derived from signals you're already producing.

Tenure doesn't ask you to maintain context files or write session summaries. Project Resume is built automatically from the activity stream flowing through Tenure every time you work, then summarized on demand when you return.

01
Collect

File activity accumulates passively

Every time you switch files in VS Code, Tenure records the path, language, and timestamp. No extra step. This is the same workspace sync that powers scoped belief injection. Project Resume is a derived view over data you're already producing.

// src/pages/use-case/project-resume.astro — visited 4× — last active 13d ago
02
Assemble

Last N files, recent beliefs, and past queries

When you return to a repo, Tenure assembles a source bundle: the most recently visited files for this project, beliefs created or updated since your last session, and the queries you sent through the audit log. No LLM needed yet — this is a deterministic query over existing data.

03
Summarize

One model pass. Facts separated from inference.

A single LLM pass over the source bundle produces the summary: files, beliefs, queries, and inferred next steps. Facts and inferences are kept separate. You can always ask "why am I seeing this?" and every item traces back to a source event in the audit log.

// confidence: 0.91 — based on 3 beliefs, 6 file events, 4 audit turns
04
Resume

"Resume in Chat" opens your AI client pre-loaded

The Resume in Chat button injects the full snapshot as a context block into your AI session. Ask "what should I do next?" and the model answers from your actual last session — not a generic suggestion based on the filename.

Why not just use AGENTS.md?

Static files solve a different problem.

Developers have tried markdown files, .cursorrules, AGENTS.md, Obsidian notes, and MCP memory servers. They all solve part of the problem. None of them solve the returning-to-work problem.

AGENTS.md / .cursorrules

Great for stable conventions. Breaks when code changes and the file doesn't. Best developers in the Cursor community describe it as "the boring answer", it works until maintenance becomes its own job.

Solves conventions. Doesn't solve re-orientation.
MCP memory servers

Promising, but cross-tool reliability isn't there yet. Memory that one tool writes, another reads only works if both are disciplined about when to write and retrieve and in practice they're not. Mostly experimental outside single-tool setups.

Promising. Not production-grade across tools yet.
Obsidian / Notion

Good for personal notes. As agent context it goes stale fast. Requires manual updates after every session. The cognitive overhead of maintaining external notes is itself part of the problem.

Needs manual maintenance. Doesn't scale.
Tenure Project Resume

Derived from signals already flowing through Tenure. No file to maintain. Scoped to the active project. Traceable to source events. Works across every tool that routes through Tenure: VSCode, Windsurf, or Claude Code.

Always current. Zero maintenance. Cross-tool.
What's next

The ticket already knows what files need to change.

The next layer of Project Resume connects sprint planning to the IDE. A Jira ticket assigned during standup already contains enough information to know which files, services, and patterns are relevant. Tenure will close that gap — so the developer who sits down to code is already oriented before they've typed a character.

🎟️

Jira + Linear integration

Link a ticket to a Project Resume snapshot. Tenure surfaces which files are likely to need changes, based on the ticket description and your project's belief graph.

Coming soon
📄

Confluence + Notion docs

Architecture decisions in Confluence become part of the context injected when you open a relevant file. The planning doc from last month surfaces when it's actually useful.

On the roadmap
🔀

PR history

Recent commits and open PRs against this project scope fold into the resume. What changed, who changed it, and what review comments were left — visible before you write the next line.

On the roadmap
The goal: by the time a developer writes their first line of code, they're already oriented. Zero orientation tax.
Get started

Tenure is free, local, and MIT licensed.

Install the VS Code extension, point your AI client at localhost:5757/v1, and Tenure starts building context the moment you open a file. Project Resume is available as a button in the Tenure sidebar panel.