| name | handover |
| description | Persist CONTEXT.md, NOTES.md, and PLAN.md for later continuation of coding work. Use when pausing implementation or transferring repository state; this skill records the current session and does not create or execute a cross-domain plan. |
| model | opus |
| allowed-tools | Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Task, Bash, TodoRead, AskUserQuestion |
| argument-hint | [prefix] |
Work Handover Documentation
Persist CONTEXT.md, NOTES.md, and PLAN.md so the next worker can
continue without sharing the current session context. coding:takeover owns
resuming work from these documents.
Boundaries
- Use for: recording session state — background, file status, decisions,
implementation insights, and remaining tasks — into the three handover
documents when pausing or transferring work.
- Do not use for: git operations (commit, push, branch management), builds,
tests, deployments, code review or analysis, or modifying any project file
other than the handover documents; it does not replace project-management
or issue-tracking tools.
Inputs
- Required: none — defaults to
CONTEXT.md, NOTES.md, and PLAN.md in
the working directory.
- Optional: a prefix argument producing
<prefix>-CONTEXT.md,
<prefix>-NOTES.md, and <prefix>-PLAN.md (e.g. sprint1-CONTEXT.md);
reject prefixes containing slashes or file extensions.
- Prerequisites: the working directory is a git repository.
Workflow
- Analyze project context. Validate the prefix and git repository per
Inputs, rejecting invalid input with a clear message. Retrieve all todos
via TodoRead, preserving status, relationships, and patterns noted in task
content. Gather git state: current branch,
git status, staged and
unstaged diffs, untracked files (git ls-files --others --exclude-standard), and recent commit messages. Identify background,
goals, decisions, architectural patterns, and conventions from project
docs and commit history.
- Classify every changed or planned file into three categories with
substates, recording per file: path, status with substate, relevant
TODO/FIXME/REFACTOR comments, what specifically remains, and blockers.
- Completed: committed and unchanged (absent from git status).
- In progress: modified or staged — substate
need-completion
(TODO/FIXME comments), need-fixing (test failures, errors, or
HACK/WORKAROUND comments), need-linting (style violations), or
need-refactoring (REFACTOR comments or quality concerns).
- Planned: untracked or referenced in TODO comments — substate
need-draft (skeleton required) or need-testing (no test coverage).
- Extract content and prune. Map content to documents — CONTEXT.md:
background and goals, active reference documents, impactful decisions,
current architectural patterns, gotchas and workarounds, dependency and
configuration changes, accepted assumptions and their recheck triggers;
NOTES.md: implementation issues and the solutions applied, provenance-labeled
discoveries, deviations, workarounds still needed, pending decisions,
invalidated plan steps, hard-won gotchas, and only what was learned through
doing; PLAN.md: goal breakdown, incomplete tasks, active phases, current
dependencies, active risks, unmet success criteria, and evidence that
requires a pivot. When updating existing files, proactively remove content
useless to future execution: outdated context, resolved issues (keep the lesson
only), details of completed tasks (keep path plus one-line summary), stale
references, and verbose history — archive it under a "Historical Notes"
section at the document bottom. Keep only the last 5 commits under "Recent
Changes", condense completed files into a summary with the top 3-5 listed,
rewrite any section exceeding 100 lines down to actionable items, and
consolidate similar gotchas and decisions into single entries.
- Consult the user on open decisions found in steps 1-3 (pending
architecture, technology, scope, or configuration choices) via
AskUserQuestion — never make architectural, technical, or strategic
decisions unilaterally. Follow
references/decision-consultation.md
for identification, categorization, the mandatory "Perform research" and
"Defer decision" options, and outcome processing.
- Write the documents. Generate one timestamp via
date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" and use it for every "Last Updated",
"Created", and "Updated" field — never placeholders. Update existing files
in place: refresh dynamic sections (Current State, File Status, Recent
Changes), preserve historical content, and integrate decision outcomes —
finalized decisions with rationale into CONTEXT.md "Key Decisions &
Patterns", accepted assumptions with recheck triggers into CONTEXT.md,
deferred decisions into NOTES.md "Pending Decisions", research files and
deviations referenced from NOTES.md, and decision-driven, blocked, or
invalidated tasks plus pivot signals into PLAN.md. Create missing files from
the structures in
references/document-templates.md.
- Run the verification below; when a check fails, fix the cause and re-run
that check. Repeat until every check passes or a concrete blocker remains,
then report the blocker instead of looping.
Verification
- All three documents exist under the requested names and follow the
template structure.
- Every timestamp is a real ISO 8601 value from the
date command.
- Each decision identified in step 4 was consulted, and its outcome landed in
the correct document section.
- Accepted assumptions name their evidence and recheck triggers; deviations and
invalidated plan steps are preserved, and every pivot signal has an affected
phase or task.
- No project file outside the handover documents was modified.
Completion
Emit the summary defined in
references/output-format.md: file paths,
classification counts, decisions consulted with outcomes, plan updates,
research files, the document-section checklist, and next steps. See
references/examples.md for usage variants (default,
custom prefix, updates, error cases) and the takeover continuation scenario.