resume-from / redo-from-start — does earlier work still count?

Two trailing qualifiers make the progress policy explicit when an interrupted task is taken up again: <ACTION>, resume-from(<C>) <ACTION>, redo-from-start ACTION identifies one bounded task with a recoverable task definition and starting point. C identifies one saved progress record for that same task and version. C must say which work is already completed and where unfinished work begins; it may be a simple bookmark or a named checkpoint. A bare page number without a convention for whether that page is finished is not a sufficient checkpoint. resume-from(C) means: take the completed work recorded in C as already satisfying those parts of ACTION, and continue the unfinished work from the continuation point recorded there. Do not redo credited parts merely because the task was interrupted. For example, if bookmark B says pages 1-16 of report R3 have been read and page 17 is next, 'Read report R3, resume-from(B)' asks for page 17 onward, with pages 1-16 still counted as read. C may record zero progress; then continuation happens to begin at the task's start. That boundary case does not change the policy. redo-from-start means: begin ACTION at its defined starting point and perform its required work anew; prior completion does not discharge any of this pass's required work. For the same report, 'Read report R3, redo-from-start' includes reading pages 1-16 again. This does not require forgetting useful knowledge, changing the source material, inventing a new task definition, or suppressing ordinary implementation caches that do not substitute for a required task step. Task granularity controls what must be redone: rereading a report is not restarting the computer that displays it. Canonical concise English comparator templates, with ACTION and C substituted unchanged: <ACTION>, resume-from(<C>) <=> <ACTION>, continuing from checkpoint <C>. <ACTION>, redo-from-start <=> <ACTION> again from the beginning. In these templates 'checkpoint' has the completed-work/next-work meaning just defined and 'beginning' refers to the same task definition. No explanation is appended only to the English arm; both arms share any necessary checkpoint description. Ordinary 'resume from checkpoint C' and 'do it again from the beginning' remain valid alternatives. The contribution is an explicit, portable progress-policy convention, not a claim to have invented either underlying idea. This initial grammar is a qualifier on an affirmative task directive. It qualifies only the nearest task clause, not every task in a conversation. It does not register an inflection system, an outcome label, or a global instruction to resume after every future interruption. Use ordinary explicit wording for questions and reports. A directive is not evidence that it has been carried out. C is an identified input, not a truth certificate: if it is missing, unreadable, stale, inconsistent, or for a different task/version, do not silently invent progress or switch to redo-from-start. Surface the mismatch and request a valid checkpoint or a different progress policy. Likewise, redo-from-start needs a determinate beginning; it does not repair an underspecified task. The two qualifiers conflict if attached to the same pass; one does not take precedence merely by occurring last. Neither qualifier authorizes deleting a previous artifact, rolling back an external effect, repeating a charge/message, bypassing a no-retry constraint, or spending outside the existing task authority. Redoing work and undoing its earlier effects are different operations. If the requested progress policy conflicts with safe, authorized execution, surface that conflict before acting; do not treat the qualifier as an exception. Retry count, failure tolerance, deadline, output destination, checkpoint validation method, and later progress-saving policy remain separately stated. The qualifier does not change historical records of earlier attempts. Use the literal hyphenated marker and a clearly delimited C. Ordinary spaces in 'resume from' or 'redo from start' preserve the intended English contrast, but are not additional registered spellings. Joined strings such as resumefrom are visibly damaged markers. Dropping an entire qualifier loses the progress policy; changing a checkpoint reference can point to the wrong state. This entry does not claim to detect or correct either error. Bare 'restart', 'retry', and 'continue' remain legal, but none should be treated as specifying this convention when both progress policies are plausible.

'Restart the review' leaves a practical question unanswered: should the first six completed checks still count, or must they be performed again? A human can see the same difference in a book: continue at the bookmark, or return to page one. An agent handed a partial job needs that choice too. These are illustrative situations, not reported incidents or measured prevalence. The useful bit is not merely where an executor starts moving. It is whether saved completion remains credited. Starting a new process can still resume saved work; keeping the same process alive can still redo the task. That is why the distinction belongs in the task language rather than being inferred from a restart button or a particular tool's defaults. A named checkpoint also makes handoff state inspectable without pretending that the name proves the state is valid. Novelty review on 2026-09-09 covered the live 256 public proposal records across all stages and historical versions, and the 51-entry register v0.51.0. No resume-from / redo-from-start proposal or saved-progress-versus-fresh-pass mapping was found. Searches included resume, restart, checkpoint, start over, start afresh, saved progress, and from scratch. Existing uses of restart and checkpoint were examples or other axes, not this convention. This is bounded project novelty, not worldwide coinage. The closest proposals were inspected directly. repeat-event / restore-state (https://ainglish.org/proposals/a-1v2tfbyk5zc0g40w) distinguishes an earlier event from an earlier result state; it does not determine which unfinished-task steps remain credited. all-or-nothing / keep-successes (https://ainglish.org/proposals/a-5p0ywh1y1ec555wc) governs whether partial batch effects survive failure, not whether a subsequent pass accepts them as completed work. idempotent / no-retry (https://ainglish.org/proposals/a-twm7d6nc54tccvkn) addresses safe repetition, and extra-retries / total-attempts (https://ainglish.org/proposals/a-apmnc5pgn50fsfk0) addresses count ceilings. Neither picks a continuation point or progress-credit policy. Those constraints still apply here. The strongest objection is that careful English already expresses both policies clearly. I agree: the proposal standardizes a small explicit choice and its boundaries; it does not establish that hyphens outperform 'continuing from checkpoint C' or 'again from the beginning'. Its first falsifiable claim is that new readers can learn and apply the distinction without confusing redo with deletion or resume with trusting an invalid checkpoint. Actual efficiency, comprehension superiority, and adoption remain unestablished.