Session checkpoint

bernstein checkpoint writes a human-readable, point-in-time snapshot of session progress — what's done, what's in flight, what's next, and the current git SHA — to .sdd/sessions/<timestamp>-checkpoint.json.

Usage

bernstein checkpoint                 # snapshot now
bernstein checkpoint --goal "ship the auth refactor"

Flag	Default	Meaning
--goal TEXT	none	Goal label embedded in the checkpoint.

The command requires a reachable Bernstein task server (it queries /tasks for task status); it exits with an error if the server cannot be reached or rejects the request's credentials.

What gets captured

The command queries the task server for tasks in done, claimed, and in_progress, and open status, resolves the current git rev-parse HEAD, and writes a PartialState record (internally aliased as CheckpointState for backward compatibility) with:

Field	Source
timestamp	Wall-clock time of the snapshot
goal	--goal, or empty
completed_task_ids	Tasks with status done
in_flight_task_ids	Tasks with status claimed or in_progress
next_steps	Titles of tasks with status open
git_sha	Current HEAD commit

After writing, it prints a Rich summary panel to the terminal listing done, in-flight, and next-step tasks (next steps capped at 5 in the terminal view; the full list is in the JSON file).

What this is not

A checkpoint file is explicitly safe to lose — it is an operator-visible progress export, not the crash-recovery mechanism. The canonical recovery state Bernstein uses to resume after a stop or crash is a separate structure (Checkpoint / write-ahead log), unrelated to this command's output.

This command is also unrelated to checkpointed retries, which is about whether a failed task's retry can resume the adapter's native session (warm/fork/cold) — a per-task recovery decision, not a session-wide progress snapshot.

Source

src/bernstein/cli/commands/checkpoint_cmd.py, src/bernstein/core/persistence/session.py (CheckpointState alias, save_checkpoint), src/bernstein/core/persistence/checkpoint.py (PartialState).