Read viewpoint in agent handoffs

You read "on Jane Doe's left" in an agent handoff and picture the object on your own left. The sentence still looks familiar when you return to it, but the view in your mind belongs to someone else. Before carrying that picture into the next sentence, find the observer the words actually name.

Every handoff passage below is invented. The people have fictional Doe placeholder names. The passages concern reading positions in prose; nothing described in them is an action for you to take.

Anchor left and right to the named observer

Jane Doe faces north. A lantern stands west of Jane Doe, on Jane Doe's left. An urn stands east of Jane Doe, on Jane Doe's right.

Begin with Jane Doe facing north. Then read the lantern to the west, on Jane Doe's left, followed by the urn to the east, on Jane Doe's right. The passage names the person, the facing and both objects' places.

Resist inserting yourself opposite Jane Doe while reading those words. From an imagined position facing Jane Doe, you might picture left and right reversed. That imagined view has no place in the quoted passage. Its left and right belong to Jane Doe.

A handoff can hold these sentences in a Markdown file. The filename ending tells you about the file, while the sentence naming Jane Doe tells you whose view to hold as you read.

Keep the facing attached to the placement

Revisit the lantern passage with its opening sentence intact. "Jane Doe faces north" remains relevant when you reach the lantern and the urn. Reading only the two object sentences would leave you with relative positions while discarding the explicit facing that anchors them.

Mentally retain the whole relation: north-facing Jane Doe, lantern on the left to the west, urn on the right to the east. This wording follows the example's order. It does not put the urn first merely because you happen to picture that object more vividly.

The named objects stay explicit throughout this reading. Each object has a name already. The question is where the lantern and urn lie from Jane Doe's stated view.

Let a stated turn change the later view

A separate invented passage includes a turn:

Jane Doe faces north. A lantern stands west of Jane Doe, on Jane Doe's left. An urn stands east of Jane Doe, on Jane Doe's right. Jane Doe turns to face south. The lantern and urn stay still. The lantern is now on Jane Doe's right. The urn is now on Jane Doe's left.

Read the north-facing view through the lantern and urn sentences. At the sentence about turning south, change the facing you hold for Jane Doe. The next sentence keeps the lantern and urn still. The last two sentences place the lantern on Jane Doe's right and the urn on Jane Doe's left.

The earlier left and right remain part of the passage. They describe the view before the turn. The later right and left describe the view after it. Reading both as though Jane Doe faced north throughout would erase the stated turn.

Do not carry the south-facing view backward either. The lantern appears on the left before Jane Doe turns and on the right afterward. Both descriptions can stand because the passage explicitly changes the facing between them.

These examples use short quotations. Markdown code blocks concern a different way of enclosing text. An enclosure alone would not tell you whether an observer had turned; that information comes from the sentences.

Change observers only when the prose does

Consider another invented handoff:

Jane Doe faces north. Alex Doe faces south. A vase stands west of both people. The vase is on Jane Doe's left and Alex Doe's right.

Read Jane Doe facing north, then Alex Doe facing south. Next comes the vase west of both people. The final sentence gives Jane Doe the left-hand view and Alex Doe the right-hand view of that vase.

The two people face opposite ways. Their different left and right descriptions do not require two vases. The passage names a vase and relates that vase to each person's facing.

Keep each facing beside the person it describes. Continuing to use Jane Doe's north-facing view when reading Alex Doe's right would carry the earlier observer into wording that explicitly names another person. Switch at the name the prose gives you, without moving the vase in your imagination.

Leave an absent facing open

Now read this shorter invented line:

A lantern stands on Jane Doe's left.

The line gives a lantern and Jane Doe's left. Jane Doe's facing goes unstated. Nothing here establishes that the lantern stands west. The north-facing Jane Doe from the earlier passages cannot supply a facing for this separate line.

Ask, "Which way does Jane Doe face in this passage?" Until that is stated, retain the relative placement without adding west or east. Missing information can stay missing while the words that are present remain readable.

If you discuss separate handoff files, use their existing names to keep the passages apart. The separate article on Markdown file naming concerns those names. Within each passage, hold the observer and facing given there rather than borrowing the view from another file.

Finish the reading at the limits of the prose. A named observer fixes whose left and right you are reading. A stated facing anchors that view. An explicit turn changes the later view, and an absent facing leaves that part open.

Where Sashmark fits

Sashmark has a desktop v1 in development to read Markdown and to edit the writing your separate AI agents produce. AI stays outside this planned app. Those reading and editing uses remain planned.