converse-hold

Step 5 — Hold

Stamp what you are waiting for, then post your framing. $CONV, $VISIT, and $SUBJECT are resolved in step 1's claim block.

converse-hold.sh takes the one decision or input needed as its argument and $VISIT / $SUBJECT in its environment. It exits non-zero when the hold did not fully land, and then you must NOT frame:

if VISIT="$VISIT" SUBJECT="$SUBJECT" \
     "$CONV/converse-hold.sh" "<the one decision or input needed, ≤130 chars>"; then
  : # the hold is real and stamped — post the framing below
else
  # NOT a hold yet: nothing re-asks the subject. Do NOT post the framing.
  # Raise the failure in the thread and do not describe the subject as held.
  exit 1
fi

A hold IS a demand. The operator owes an answer before the conversation can conclude, so the wait is a bead with a blocks edge, not a comment, and converse-hold.sh files it against the right bead for you. A conversation about a PR anchor gates the VISIT: the conversation cannot conclude until the operator answers, and the subject anchor keeps moving — a conversation does not freeze its subject's merge. Only a pre-PR (unanchored) subject takes the demand on itself, because its held marker needs that edge. A ruling files unassigned and routes to the operator's partition; pass --assignee <who> to the writer only when the demand is work a named person must perform, and that one is theirs to close, never yours. A resumed hold refreshes the demand this sitting filed rather than filing a second. The visit's escalation_key scopes the demand, so a sibling sitting with its own key on a shared subject keeps its own.

Stamp BEFORE you wait, not after. The hold IS a demand: until the demand is filed nothing re-asks the question, so it lands before you hand control to the operator. Write the takeaway to state the decision needed when read cold off the board. The same step sets gc.hold_demand on this visit, the trace step 1's action=hold arm reads to tell a real hold from a claim that died before step 2.

To pause the merge, pass --hold-merge — by default a conversation does not. The hold above leaves a PR free to land while you talk, which is the shepherd case a conversation opened to help a stuck PR wants. When the sitting instead decides the merge must wait on the operator — the PR should not land until this is settled — add the flag to the same call:

if VISIT="$VISIT" SUBJECT="$SUBJECT" \
     "$CONV/converse-hold.sh" --hold-merge "<the one decision or input needed, ≤130 chars>"; then
  : # the hold is real and the merge is held — post the framing below
else
  # the conversation hold or the merge hold did not land — do NOT frame.
  exit 1
fi

It files a second demand on the anchor — the blocks edge the merge sweep already honors — and fails the hold closed if that demand does not land, so a framing never claims a merge hold it did not take. Omit the flag and the PR keeps moving. Either way the step-7 sign-off discharges whichever demands you filed.

The takeaway is the sentence; held is the state. Where $SUBJECT already carries an anchor state the held transition is skipped, and refused if attempted: merge.sh, gate-ensure.sh and pr-facts.sh enumerate anchors by that state, and held drops it from all three. It is the pre-PR hold; the explicit merge hold above is an edge on the anchor, not this state.

A framing that asks for no decision still files one. What the operator owes then is the close-out itself, and the demand is what brings the subject back if the thread is lost before they take it. The gate is not about there being a question; it is about the subject not moving until a person acts.

One sentence, ≤130 characters. The takeaway reads holding — <your sentence>, the board's NEEDS cell, and the prefix spends part of the headline cap. converse-hold.sh refuses a longer sentence before it writes anything and says how far to cut it. What will not fit goes in the notes. Never park a live conversation: the writer's --release clears the assignee and route, and the only place it belongs is a stand-down ruling, written as gc-helm.sh takeaway <anchor> "<ruling>" --release --no-wait. It parks the anchor AND cancels the run beneath it through gascity, and --no-wait records that the ruling ended the wait rather than moving it.