handoff

---

name: handoff description: "Save provenance, decisions, phases, context policy, and next steps as kernel.handoff/v1. Triggers: handoff, save, pause, context, continue later." user-invocable: true allowed-tools: Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, Write kernel: kind: state_transition version: 2 side_effects: writes_meta confirmation: none produces: - kernel.handoff/v1

Why manifest-first + bounded (EXP-L21): what a decision needs is flat (~50-70k tokens) regardless of session length; the accumulating transcript is almost pure decoration by late session. A handoff that says "read the conversation" recreates the waste. A handoff that pins exact selectors + phases lets the next session reconstruct ONLY the load-bearing state.

Reference: skills/context-mgmt/SKILL.md

<on_start>

agentdb read-start

</on_start>

<ask_user> Use AskUserQuestion when: state extraction complete, before writing the manifest Ask: "Anything to add to the handoff? Blockers, decisions, or context I might have missed?" Options: looks complete, add context, skip handoff </ask_user>

Context section — the attention budget is the design center:

• policy.mode: advisory (default) | bounded (extra loads must be justified + ledgered) | sealed (forbidden globs hook-blocked; for controlled experiments)
• required: SELECTORS, not whole files, wherever a section suffices: {path, heading: "## X"} · {path, lines: "A-B"} · {path, grep: "pat", context: N} · {git_diff: "revA..revB"} — each with a reason
• forbidden: globs the resume must NOT touch (sealed mode enforces via guard-context hook)
• budget: target_tokens (aim: boot + manifest + 2-12k selected history, per EXP-L21), max_tokens (hard stop)

Execution section: entry_phase, entrypoint (the literal first operation), stop_conditions, checkpoints (when to emit kernel.checkpoint/v1 during the resumed work).

Resume section: one-line continuation prompt: /kernel:ingest resume from _meta/handoffs/{file}.json

JSON strings are always quoted, so sha/commit fields cannot type-drift (the old YAML fails validation).

<on_complete>

agentdb write-end '{"skill":"handoff","saved_to":"_meta/handoffs/{file}.json","branch":"X","tier":N}'
# If non-local profile: post handoff summary to GitHub Discussions (Agent Logs category)
# Suggest /kernel:retrospective if learnings accumulated across sessions

</on_complete>