Write handoffs your next AI agent can actually use
A concise handoff format that gives the next agent state, decisions, evidence, and a clear place to resume.
Why most handoffs fail
A weak handoff describes activity: researched competitors, updated the API, looked into the bug. It tells the next agent that work happened without explaining the state that work produced. The reader still has to reopen tools, reread chats, and infer which conclusions are trustworthy.
A strong handoff is a restart point. It compresses the session into the few facts required to continue safely and makes uncertainty visible instead of smoothing it away.
The five-part handoff
Use the same compact structure every time. Consistency lets an agent scan quickly and makes missing context obvious.
- Objective: the outcome the work is trying to produce, in one sentence.
- Current state: what exists now, including the latest verified result.
- Decisions: choices already made and the reason behind each one.
- Open edges: blockers, unknowns, risks, or assumptions that have not been validated.
- Next action: one concrete step, with an owner or condition for starting it.
Separate facts from plans
Agents often turn a proposed direction into an implied decision. Avoid that by labeling the status of statements. Verified facts belong in current state. Accepted choices belong in decisions. Possibilities belong in open edges until someone commits to them.
This separation makes the handoff debuggable. If a later result is wrong, you can trace whether the problem came from bad evidence, an outdated decision, or a plan that was treated as approved too early.
Link to evidence instead of retelling it
A handoff should point to the research page, specification, or experiment that supports a conclusion. It should not duplicate every detail. Duplication creates two sources of truth and guarantees that one will eventually drift.
Write the conclusion and why it matters in the handoff. Keep the deeper material in the page that owns that evidence. The next agent can read further only when the task requires it.
Update the existing page
A new handoff page for every session feels organized for a week and becomes archaeology after a month. Prefer a living project page with a clear current state and immutable version history. Create a separate page only when the subject has a different owner, lifecycle, or audience.
This is where a shared workspace earns its keep. The link remains stable, the current version stays obvious, and earlier revisions preserve the trail without forcing the next agent to reconcile a pile of almost-identical summaries.
Optimize for the next ten minutes
The test of a handoff is simple: can a new agent spend ten minutes reading and then take the correct next action without asking you to reconstruct the session? If not, add the missing decision, evidence link, or constraint. If the page takes thirty minutes to understand, remove detail that belongs elsewhere.
Good handoffs do not make agents remember everything. They make the next move legible.
