Handoff

Overview

A handoff is a self-contained context package that lets a different person — or a fresh AI agent — pick up in-progress work without re-deriving everything. Most delegation fails not because the next person lacks skill, but because the context in the originator's head never got written down: what's done, what's half-done, why a path was abandoned, and what to do next. This skill produces a structured handoff document that captures exactly that, so the receiver can be productive on their first action instead of their tenth.

Use it across any domain in this library — engineering work, a PM initiative, a compliance audit, a draft document — wherever work outlives a single working session.

Use when

• Switching off a task — you started something and someone else (or future-you) will finish it.
• Delegating to an agent — handing a scoped task to a sub-agent or teammate who lacks your conversation history.
• End of a session/shift — async teams where the next person picks up cold.
• Escalating — passing a blocked item up or sideways with full context on what was tried.

Clarify First

Before writing the handoff, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• ] Receiver — a teammate, a fresh AI agent, or future-you (sets how much background to spell out vs assume)
• ] The goal + done-state — what "finished" looks like for this work (anchors the Next Steps section)
• ] Current state — what is done, in-progress, and untouched right now (the heart of the handoff)
• ] Constraints & landmines — deadlines, decisions already made, paths already tried and abandoned (prevents the receiver repeating dead ends)

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the handoff.

Quick Start

bash
# Gather objective state (git branch, recent commits, changed/untracked files) to seed the handoff
python scripts/handoff_context.py --repo . --format markdown

1. Run handoff_context.py to capture the objective state (git status, recent commits, changed files).
2. Fill the handoff template (assets/handoff_template.md) — lead with goal + current state, not history.
3. Make every open item actionable: a verb, a file/location, and the expected outcome.
4. List abandoned approaches and why — this is the highest-value, most-often-omitted section.
5. End with the single recommended next action so the receiver has zero ambiguity about step 1.

The handoff structure

| Section | What it answers | Keep it to | |---------|-----------------|-----------| | Goal & done-state | Where are we headed and how do we know we're done? | 2-3 sentences | | Current state | What's done / in-progress / untouched right now? | A checklist | | Next steps | What should the receiver do, in order? | Ranked, actionable | | Decisions made | What's already settled (don't relitigate)? | Bullets + one-line why | | Abandoned paths | What was tried and ruled out, and why? | Bullets + reason | | Open questions / risks | What's unresolved or could bite? | Bullets, flag owner | | Key locations | Files, branches, dashboards, tickets, people | Links/paths |

Anti-patterns

• Narrating history instead of state. The receiver needs "where we are," not a chronological diary. Lead with current state.
• Vague next steps. "Continue the integration" is not actionable. "Wire auth.py:42 to the new token endpoint; expect a 200 with a JWT" is.
• Omitting abandoned paths. If you don't say "we tried X, it failed because Y," the receiver wastes hours rediscovering it.
• Dumping the whole conversation. A handoff is a curated package, not a transcript. Summarize and link.
• No single starting action. Always end with the one thing to do first.

Scope & Limitations

In Scope: Producing a structured, self-contained handoff document for in-progress work in any domain; capturing objective repo state via the helper script; making open work actionable for the receiver.

Out of Scope: Project status reporting to stakeholders (project-management/execution/status-update-generator/); incident post-mortems (project-management/execution/post-mortem/); onboarding a new hire to a whole role (hr-operations/, project-management/career/pm-onboarding/). A handoff is about one body of in-flight work, not a person's full ramp-up.

References

• assets/handoff_template.md — fill-in-the-blanks handoff document.
• scripts/handoff_context.py — captures git branch, recent commits, and changed/untracked files as a seed block.