--- name: handover description: Use when handing finished work over to code review — writing a PR description or packaging a change for review by a human, an agent, or both. license: MIT metadata: version: "0.10" --- # Handover Package a finished change so its reviewers never reconstruct intent from the diff. Write for a reviewer holding the diff and nothing else — no planning docs, no session, no knowledge that either exists. ## Resolve the task The input is any partial reference — ticket id, slug, a planning artifact's path — or nothing, meaning the session's task; in a fresh session, infer it from branch name and recent commits. Resolve it to the task's **planning home**: its `-/` directory (no ticket → no id) in the project's planning directory, or its flat `-.*` files in a shared family directory. One clear match → proceed, stating the home and artifacts found. Inferred, or several candidates (`-vN`, …) → confirm first. An explicit reference matching nothing local → stop and ask; never guess. ## Gather Read these, skipping what doesn't exist: 1. **Task artifacts** — every `-*.md` in the planning home: ticket, requirements, plan, decisions log, prior review and handover rounds, whatever else matches. 2. **Related tickets** — one hop only: parent (climbing higher only past thin containers — a parent that is only a title and a child list), direct predecessors/successors, explicit relations, family-directory siblings; never expand their own relations. Local `.TICKET.md`s first; fetch from the tracker only when a relation has no local file and looks load-bearing for a why — in doubt whether to fetch, ask. 3. **The session**, when it produced the change: decisions, pivots, constraints. 4. **The diff** from the merge base with the target to `HEAD`, plus commit subjects. Target: the one a prior review or handover round records, else the open PR's base, else the auto-detected default branch — of the `upstream` remote when one exists, else of `origin`, via `git ls-remote --symref HEAD`; that failing (e.g. offline), the sole existing candidate among `main`, `master`, `develop`/`development`, preferring `upstream`'s remote-tracking ref, then `origin`'s, then the local branch; none or ambiguous → ask. State it and `git fetch` its remote (local-only target → nothing to fetch; a failed fetch → ask, never diff stale refs). No merge base → `git fetch --unshallow` and retry, else ask — never diff against the target itself. An empty diff from the merge base → probably a wrong target: say so and ask, never match planned items against it. Before diffing, name uncommitted changes, untracked included, and ask which belong: the author commits those first; the rest stays out. 5. **PR conventions** — the repo's PR template, wherever the forge looks for one (e.g. root, `.github/`, `docs/`; several → ask the author which), and any project skill for PR descriptions. An earlier artifact — a ticket review, a prior round — counts only where nothing later settled the point. Each source once, no deeper than the artifact needs: skim the diff whole, deep-read only the files you will name in the *Review guide*, and never rebuild history commit by commit — which commit changed what is the diff's job, not yours. Then match the plan's steps and acceptance criteria against the diff both ways — planned but absent, present but unplanned. Done when every source is read or confirmed absent and every planned item is matched against a non-empty diff. ## Source every claim State a "why", or any other claim about the change, only where a source gives it. Silence is not a source: never infer a fact from what the diff and docs leave unsaid ("untested so far", "nobody calls this"). A deviation nothing explains is asked of the author once; unanswered or unaskable, it ships flagged in plain words ("nothing records why — worth confirming"), since it may be an unintentional gap rather than a decision. Sourcing is your gate, not the reviewer's reading: it decides what you may write, and never appears in the text. When not sure, always ask. Never guess. ## The artifact `-.HANDOVER.md` in the planning home, same base as the task's other artifacts; already taken → `-.HANDOVER-2.md`, `-3`, … — never overwrite. No planning home → `-/` in the project's planning directory (none evident → `.agents/plans/`), id and slug derived from branch name and changes, stating the choice. The file's first line is the PR title in the repo's commit convention (`# `); the body follows, paste-ready as the PR description, and stands alone: - **Mention only what the reviewer can open** — a tracker URL, or a file you verified is committed on the branch. Everything else — planning docs, decisions log, session, commit hashes — is neither linked nor named: write what it says ("this was meant to …"), never where it says it. A colleague's clarification is stated as what it settled, grounded in something openable ("the goal is X, which <ticket URL> needs"); naming the colleague is the last resort. - **Related tickets go unmentioned** unless a why depends on one ("built this way to prepare for <X>") — then cite its tracker URL. - **Under a screen**, ~400 words; the caps below are limits, not targets. - **Never hard-wrap**: forges (e.g. GitHub) render newlines in PR bodies as line breaks — one line per paragraph or bullet. - **Plain reviewer-facing wording**, never this skill's vocabulary. Before drafting, actually invoke use-conversational-language — reciting its rules from memory does not count. Not installed: write plain prose instead, no dashes and no AI tells. Sections, skipped only when truly empty: 1. **What and why** — 2–3 lines. 2. **Decisions worth knowing** — at most 5 lines, each: what was chosen or what departs from the plan, its why or the missing-why flag, and where in the code to see it. 3. **Review guide** — the few files where judgment matters and why, what cannot be undone after merge among them; the rest named as mechanical. 4. **Known gaps** — at most 3 shortcomings, assumptions or open questions the sources establish; none → omit the section, never manufacture one. **Repo PR template** (if the repo has one) → the body is that template filled in: each section above goes into the template's matching section, else its description section; checkboxes and fields are ticked or filled only where a source backs them, else left blank; instructional comments stripped, fixed footers kept; the word cap counts only your prose. A project skill for PR descriptions overrides these rules where they differ. No template → the body is just the sections above. Done when every section and template field is filled or knowingly skipped, every claim traces to a source, and nothing in the text points at something the reviewer cannot open. ## Close Print the file's project-relative path and say the body below the title is the PR description to paste; nothing else from the body. Done when both are printed. ## Boundaries - Modify no source files; the handover doc is the only file written. - Read-only git plus `git fetch`; never commit, push, or open/comment on a PR — publishing is the user's explicit call.