git:20260728.c88a451 to git:20260807.7a765cd

---

name: handoff

description: 'Write compact caller-authored session evidence without choosing continuation. Triggers: "handoff", "write compact session handoff".'

practices: [adr, wiki-knowledge-surface, code-complete]

hexagonal_role: supporting

consumes: []

context_rel: []

skill_api_version: 1

context:

window: inherit

intent: {mode: none}

intel_scope: none

metadata:

capabilities: [handoff]

effects: [write_handoff_artifact, read_git_state, read_clock]

canonical_status: canonical

disposition: keep_specialist

graph_root: true

tier: session

dependencies: []

output_contract: caller-authored handoff artifact

---

# Handoff

A handoff works because the next context can act on exact paths and facts

without trusting the author's memory; any line the reader cannot verify from

the artifact itself is decoration, not handoff.

Write a factual session artifact that another context can read. Include:

- caller-supplied goal and summary;

- completed artifacts and exact evidence paths;

- unresolved facts or risks;

- optional caller-supplied continuation text;

- best-effort read-only repository identity when useful.

Do not infer a next action, select work, assign ownership, consume the artifact,

change tracker or Git state, classify a verdict, govern retries, or restart a

runtime. Reading a handoff must not mutate it.

Named failure mode — **optimistic closure**: writing "done" for work whose

evidence path does not exist, so the next context builds on a phantom.

Anti-pattern: narrating the session chronologically ("first I tried…, then…").

Corrective: record end-state facts — artifacts, paths, unresolved risks — and

drop the journey.

The ao session handoff and ao session rehydrate commands implement the same

Return the artifact path and stop.