| name | handoff |
| description | Produce a structured handoff summary before a session ends with unfinished work, right before /compact or /clear, or whenever /hire-agent hands a task to a different role — so in-progress state, what's actually been verified, and what's still open survive the boundary instead of being silently re-derived or dropped. |
Handoff
An agent that starts fresh (new session, post-compact, or a different
role taking over) has no memory of what you were actually in the middle
of — only what's committed to disk. Anything real but unwritten (a known
bug you haven't fixed yet, a test you meant to write, a decision you made
but didn't record) is gone the moment the boundary is crossed, and the
next agent will re-derive it, possibly wrong, or skip it entirely.
What to do
-
State what's actually done, with evidence, not intent. Don't
write "implemented the schedule feature" — write what was verified
(/verify-path's PASS/FAIL, if it ran) and what wasn't checked yet. A
handoff is not the place to round up to "done."
-
State what's in progress and exactly where it stopped. The next
agent needs the specific next step, not "continue working on X" — name
the file, the failing test, or the decision still open.
-
Name anything committed but not yet verified, and anything
verified but not yet committed — these are the two states most likely
to get silently lost or silently re-done.
-
Point at the durable record, don't duplicate it. PRD.md and
AGENTS.md already hold the product's committed state; a handoff
summary is only for what's not in those yet — session-local context
that would otherwise evaporate.
-
If handing off to a different role (via /hire-agent), say which
role is picking this up and why — the incoming role should not have to
re-derive that from the diff.
Anti-patterns to avoid
- Writing a handoff summary that just restates what's already visible in
git log/git diff — its only value is the part that isn't on disk
yet (open questions, verified-vs-not, the specific next step).
- Rounding an untested change up to "done" to make the handoff look
cleaner — the next agent (or the founder) will trust it and skip
re-verifying.
- Skipping a handoff before
/compact or /clear on the assumption
"it's all in the code anyway" — decisions and known-but-unfixed issues
usually aren't.
