Handoff
Also called Hand-off · Session handoff
Ending one session and starting another on the same task, carrying the state forward in writing rather than in the window.
A handoff moves a task from one session to the next without losing the plot. The old session ends, whether by clearing, compaction, or simply closing the terminal, and a new one picks the work up. Since the model is stateless between sessions, nothing crosses that gap on its own. Anything the next session should know must be written down where it will look: a file in the repo, a commit message, a note on the ticket.
The failure looks like déjà vu. The new session re-investigates the codebase, rediscovers the constraint you settled an hour ago, and sometimes decides differently. Or it confidently continues from a summary that dropped the one detail that mattered, such as the reason you rejected the obvious approach. A handoff that lives only in your head is not a handoff.
Do it on purpose. Before you leave a session, ask the agent to write a handoff artifact: what was done, what remains, what was decided and why, and which files to read first. Keep it grounded in primary sources like the actual diff and the test output, not the agent's memory of them. The next session starts by reading that note, checks it against the repo, and only then begins.
- Claude CodeAsk for a HANDOFF.md before you
/clear, or use/compactwith instructions about what to keep. - AntigravityTask lists and walkthroughs are artifacts the next run can read instead of the chat.
- CodexA cloud task ends in a pull request, which is itself a handoff back to you.
“I'm out of context and the migration is half done. Do I just keep going?”
“No. Have it write a handoff: what's done, what's left, and the decisions. Commit it. Then clear and read it in.”
“Feels like overhead.”
“Ten minutes of overhead beats an hour of the next session re-learning the schema.”
Course 01 puts every one of these terms to work: you install Claude Code, run the loop, and ship a real project — permission modes, compaction, hooks and all.
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