cw-handoff

A handoff is read by an agent with none of your context and every incentive to believe you. That makes an optimistic handoff worse than no handoff: it converts your guesses into the next session's premises. Write it so the reader can re-derive the state instead of trusting the prose.

Stage 6 of the loop, and the one that makes the loop a loop: the next session starts at cw-orient with what you leave here.

When to use

• Ending a session with work in flight.
• Asked for "a prompt for another agent", branch takeover instructions, a continuation note, or a summary of current state for async work.
• Handing a lane to a different model, a fleet worker, or a remote session.

Workflow

1. Write it as a prompt the next agent can paste directly. Not a report about the work — instructions for continuing it.

2. Open with the refresh block, not with your summary. The first thing the reader should do is verify you:

   cd <repo path>
   git status --short --branch && git branch --show-current
   git log --oneline --decorate -20
   git worktree list
   ./scripts/release/check-versions.sh

   Tell them to trust that output over anything below it.

3. Cover these, in whatever order fits; drop sections that are empty:

   • Repository path and expected branch or worktree.
   • The authority line: what they may and may not do without asking. Default to local-only — no push, merge, tag, publish, GitHub Release, or destructive cleanup without explicit approval.
   • Durable files to read, ordered by importance: the scoped AGENTS.md for the area, then the specific docs (docs/CACHE.md, docs/MOTION_CONTRACT.md, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, crates/tui/AGENTS.md) the task actually touches.
   • Commits already landed, with SHAs.
   • Dirty worktree caveats, naming uncommitted files explicitly, and whose they are. This is the single most useful line in most handoffs.
   • The next slices, in priority order, each bounded the way cw-slice bounds one.
   • The verification gate for those slices — the smallest correct one from cw-gates, plus any known-flaky names.
   • Open decisions that genuinely belong to Hunter.

4. Separate three states, and never blur them: done and verified (with the command output that proves it), suspected (a hypothesis, labeled), and blocked (with what unblocks it). If you did not run it, it is not done.

5. Say what the branch is for. Local-only, pushed for backup, or intended to stay unpushed — the next agent cannot tell from git alone, and guessing wrong is how work gets force-pushed away.

6. Record missing external receipts. If the task was local-only, say which evidence you could not gather (CI state, registry state, review threads) rather than inferring it. A named gap is useful; a confident guess is not.

Red flags / don't

• Don't imply publication happened unless you verified registry, tag, or release state live.
• Don't hand off a narrative. Prefer concrete paths, commands, and SHAs.
• Don't summarize away the dirt. Unnamed uncommitted files get destroyed.
• Don't hand the next agent decisions you could have made. Reserve Hunter-facing choices for product direction, irreversible actions, and visual judgments that need eyes.
• Don't copy a previous handoff's state forward. Re-derive it; that is what step 2 is for.
• Don't include secrets, tokens, or provider credentials in a handoff file.

Output

A single paste-ready block with the default shape — refresh commands, authority line, files to read, landed SHAs, named dirty files, prioritized next slices, the verification gate, and the open decisions — with done / suspected / blocked visibly separated. Compress when trivial, but never compress away the state separation: that is what keeps guesses from becoming the next session's premises.