Instruction Anchor Guard

Preserve user-critical instructions across long sessions and context compaction. Use when users mark constraints as important/must/always/never/highest-prior...

Prevent loss or drift of user-critical constraints during compaction, session restart, or long multi-turn tasks.

When To Trigger

Trigger when any of these appear:

• User marks an instruction as important, critical, must, always, never, highest priority, rule, or constraint
• A task has more than 3 steps and spans multiple turns
• Compaction happened (or is likely) and the task has non-negotiable requirements
• Agent behavior shows possible drift from prior explicit user constraints

Anchor Ledger Schema

Store anchors in first available path:

1. memory/anchors.md
2. memory/instruction-anchors.md
3. .anchors.md (workspace root fallback only)

Entry schema (append-only, one section per anchor):

## Anchor: <id>
- **source**: <session-id|message-id|user>
- **instruction**: <canonical instruction text>
- **verbatim**: <short quote from user>
- **priority**: P0 | P1 | P2
- **scope**: global | session | task:<id> | channel:<id>
- **createdAt**: <ISO-8601 timestamp>
- **expiresAt**: <ISO-8601 timestamp or "never">
- **status**: active | paused | expired | superseded
- **signature**: <stable hash of canonical instruction>
- **supersedes**: <anchor-id or none>

Workflow

1) Capture

• Parse latest user message for candidate anchor statements
• Keep only instruction/constraint content; remove examples/chatter
• Assign default values:
  • priority: P1 (unless user says critical/highest -> P0)
  • scope: session (unless user explicitly asks global/task scope)
  • expiresAt: session end (unless user explicitly sets never/date)

2) Confirm for Broad Anchors

• If scope is global or priority is P0, ask a one-line confirmation before persisting
• Do not auto-promote P2/P1 to P0 without explicit user intent

3) Persist

• Append anchor entry to ledger
• If new anchor conflicts with old same-scope anchor, mark old one superseded
• Never rewrite history silently; keep audit trail

4) Rehydrate (each turn and after compaction)

• Load active anchors (status=active and not expired)
• Build an in-memory ANCHOR_SET sorted by priority and recency
• Inject ANCHOR_SET into planning phase before tool execution

5) Drift Check (before final answer and before destructive actions)

• Compare current plan against active anchors
• On conflict:
  • P0 conflict: stop and correct plan immediately
  • P1 conflict: auto-correct and note adjustment
  • P2 conflict: continue only if no user-level contradiction
• Emit DRIFT_CHECK block in response

Conflict Resolution

Priority order:

1. System and safety policy
2. User anchors (P0 > P1 > P2)
3. Current-turn temporary preferences

Tie-breakers:

• More specific scope wins (task > session > global) if same priority
• Newer anchor wins if same priority and same scope
• Explicit user override wins only when safety is not violated

Output Template

When anchors exist, include this compact block:

ANCHORS_ACTIVE
| ID | P | Scope | Expires | Instruction |
|----|---|-------|---------|-------------|
| anchor-001 | P0 | global | never | Never perform destructive data deletion without confirmation |

PLAN_GUARD
- Current action: <action>
- Conflicts: none | <anchor ids>
- Decision: clear | corrected | paused-awaiting-user

DRIFT_CHECK
- Last anchor sync: <timestamp>
- Drift: no | yes
- Fix applied: <none|what changed>

Safety Boundaries

• Never store tokens, API keys, passwords, cookies, or auth headers
• Never store raw personal data unless strictly required by user instruction
• Redact sensitive literals as [REDACTED]
• Store constraints, not datasets
• Do not execute destructive commands solely because an anchor exists; still require explicit confirmation for destructive actions

Expiry and Maintenance

• Mark expired when expiresAt < now
• Support control intents:
  • /anchors list
  • /anchors pause <id>
  • /anchors resume <id>
  • /anchors delete <id>
  • /anchors pin <id> never
• Rotate ledger when > 200 entries into memory/anchors-archive-YYYY-MM.md

Integration Notes

• Pair with memory-self-heal for retry/fallback after drift correction
• Pair with task-execution-guard to enforce anchor checks at each milestone
• Keep this skill deterministic and concise; avoid free-form interpretation when conflict exists