| name | hand-off-before-context-death |
| description | Write the session handoff while the verified context is still loaded, before the window or budget runs out. Use when context is running low mid-work, when pausing substantial work ("wrap up", "hand this off", "save state for the next session", "we'll pick this up later"), or when a session is stuck re-reading the same failure. Ten minutes of writing while context is loaded replaces hours of rediscovery. |
Hand Off Before Context Death
A working session ends one of two ways: with its knowledge written down, or with its
knowledge gone. The state you hold near the end of a session (what is verified, what is
actually broken, what the real next move is) took the whole session to build, and it decays
to zero the moment the session ends. Writing the handoff while that context is still
loaded costs minutes. Writing it after, from a cold start, re-pays the entire exploration.
Observed across production agent runs, the sessions that skipped this step forced their
successors to rediscover the same dead ends before doing any new work.
The priority rule
When context or budget is constrained, inheritance outranks remaining implementation.
Unfinished code is cheap: a later session writes it in an hour from a good handoff. Lost
context is not recoverable at any price. The moment you notice the window closing, stop
building and start writing, even mid-feature.
Stop conditions (when to write it)
- The gate is green, the evidence is recorded, the work is pushed: stop improving.
Polish without a named defect is scope creep in a work shirt; write the handoff instead.
- You have re-read the same failing output three times without a new hypothesis: stop.
You are looping, and self-detection of looping is unreliable. Write the handoff and hand
the failure to a fresh context; a cold reader with your notes beats a hot reader with
your fatigue.
- Context is measurably low and substantial work remains: stop building now, while you
can still write an accurate map.
