Situational Awareness Capability
Before an agent changes anything, it needs to know where it is, what has already been done, and which rules apply. Situational Awareness is that built-in orientation step — a quick look around the room before the work begins.
What it is for
Every agent pass starts here. It is especially valuable when you switch between working locally (in Cursor) and reviewing in the cloud (a ChatGPT planner), or when you paste in a handoff from an earlier session and want the agent to continue rather than start over.
Frictions it removes
- Repeated work. The agent checks what the last pass already finished instead of redoing it.
- Edits in the wrong place. It confirms the real source of truth — your local Git repository — before touching files.
- Cold starts. A pasted handoff is read and understood, so context is not lost between sessions or tools.
How it works
The agent reads its boot files, detects whether it is running locally or in a cloud planner, scans recent task notes for unfinished work, confirms the source of truth, and only then routes to the right Capability and begins editing.