Why archive agent work?
Archives preserve the review trail around a loop. They make it easier to understand what ran, what changed, and where to continue later.
Feature 05
Preserve progress, reports, workflow files, and loop state so AI coding work can be paused, inspected, and resumed.
Why it matters
Autonomous work should not vanish into a chat transcript. Hal favors files, commits, reports, and archives so a developer can pause, inspect, restore, or continue the loop later.
Archive and restore for AI coding loops means preserving workflow state, reports, progress, and implementation artifacts so agent work can be paused, inspected, resumed, or discarded. In Hal, archive behavior supports reviewability by keeping context around the code, not just the final diff.
A coding agent can make progress while leaving the developer unsure what happened. Which story ran? Which files changed? What reports were generated? What remains unresolved?
Hal is built around reviewable state, not invisible progress.
After loop work, archive behavior can preserve progress, reports, and workflow state. That makes it easier to pause a feature, inspect it later, or restore the context needed to continue.
hal plan "describe the product change"
hal convert
hal validate
hal runThe important output is not just code. It is the trail around the code.
Treat the archive as supporting evidence. Inspect the changed files, commits, reports, unresolved stories, and acceptance criteria before deciding what to keep.
| Hal does | Hal does not do |
|---|---|
| Structures PRD-native coding loops around planning, validation, implementation, reporting, and reviewable state. | Guarantee code quality, passing tests, delivery speed, revenue, rankings, or production readiness. |
| Helps supported engines work against smaller, reviewable units of work. | Replace developer review, QA, security review, or merge judgment. |
Before adopting this workflow, verify the current Hal source repository, install docs, pricing status, and machine-readable pricing. Check release notes and engine support before relying on Hal in production work.
Short answers before you put this into an agent workflow.
Archives preserve the review trail around a loop. They make it easier to understand what ran, what changed, and where to continue later.
No. Git tracks repository history. Hal archive behavior is about preserving workflow state and loop artifacts around agent-driven implementation.
No. Archived state should still be inspected by a developer before any production merge.
Keep exploring the pieces of a reviewable coding loop.
Keep long AI coding work from turning into one drifting chat by giving each story its own bounded context window.
Move through planning, conversion, validation, implementation, reporting, and archive behavior as one explicit coding loop.
Turn product intent into stories, acceptance criteria, and reviewable state before an AI coding agent touches the repo.