---
name: handoff-work
description: Prepare or resume an evidence-preserving work handoff when a task pauses, changes context, or transfers to another owner.
---

# Handoff Work

Make ongoing work resumable without guessing its checkout, decisions or
permission boundaries. Use the current task and deliberately supplied records;
do not mine transcripts, credentials or configuration to fill gaps.

For a pause or transfer, produce a compact record in the requested destination:

- Work source and objective: current issue or accepted plan, acceptance
  conditions, requested delivery stage and already authorized actions.
- Exact checkout: repository, worktree path, branch and revision; relevant
  uncommitted edits and concurrent ownership to preserve.
- Current result: completed work, changed files and unresolved behavior.
- Evidence: check commands or artifacts, revision and environment, results and
  limitations. Preserve failed or ambiguous operation receipts.
- Decisions: settled choices with rationale, open questions and decision owner
  when known. Separate facts from hypotheses.
- Next action: the smallest dependency-ready step, its owner and success
  condition, plus any action that needs new authorization.

Link a focused artifact rather than copying raw logs or sensitive material.
Use the consumer's existing handoff location when requested; a handoff does not
require a new document, skill, memory entry or tracker write. Record unknowns
explicitly. Do not invent a recipient or send the record to another task or
person without authorization.

When resuming, read the record and inspect the actual checkout, edits, work
source and live state relevant to the next step. Evidence is bounded by its
revision, environment and time; revalidate stale or invalidated claims before
relying on them. Preserve existing authorization when the scope and stage still
match, and return only material changes or uncovered actions for decision.

For continuation of an existing PR or branch, use the
[PR continuation guide](../_shared/references/pr-continuation.md) to reassess
the original goal against current behavior before updating the branch. Preserve
verified authorship, co-author trailers and links to inherited work, including
human credit when preparing a squash. A handoff does not prove the old approach
is still appropriate or authorize changing the original PR.

Complete the handoff when a next owner can identify the exact state and take
the next action. Preparing a pause record does not itself stop active work or
scheduled jobs; honor an explicit stop request using the task's available
controls. Do not infer permission to clean worktrees, cancel operations,
install configuration or repeat a failed provider action.