Handover

Handover

First capture, then continue: ensure the durable harvest is current, then emit the transient continuation the next agent starts from.

Guiding principle: existing durable artifacts should already provide suitable context for handover. This skill is to improve token efficiency with transient guidance those durable artifacts elide — and to confirm they are in good condition.

Harvest first — always, both branches

Before emitting anything, confirm the capture pass is current:

• Governing slice: its ## Harvest must be fresh — the fresh-as-of stamp matches the current lifecycle position (phase / stage + head commit). If stale, run /harvest first — do not re-survey what the harvest already swept.
• Another governing artifact (RFC, spec, review …): the capture pass still runs — route produced / learned / open to their sinks per harvest.md §5; orientation falls back to entity queries.

Phase status accurate and work committed (or its uncommitted state noted) remain adjacent truth checks.

Design work short-circuits

A slice design under a managed run already holds its own continuation. Before reaching for the dial, ask whether one is live:

doctrine design show <SLICE> --format status

A run prints — short-circuit. Do not compose a packet or a continuation prompt; either would restate what the run already carries.

1. The harvest above is what makes the durable records current. Then land anything you settled this session that the run does not yet hold — status reports the outstanding obligation and the changes since the declared baseline, so check both against what is in your hands, not your memory.

2. Emit the resume command as the continuation:

   doctrine design resume <SLICE>
   

   It keys on the slice, not on a run id, so it stays true across runs. Add --run <uid> to have a mismatch refused rather than silently resumed against a different run.

3. Add residual prose only for context you can name that neither the run nor the durable records can represent. Stage, cursor, open questions, decisions and section review state are in the run; a copy of them starts ageing the moment you write it.

No run — the command errors, and the error says which of two cases you are in. Nothing was ever started: there is nothing to short-circuit onto, so continue with the dial. Or design.md is present and the snapshot is gone, and the error names doctrine design start <SLICE> --from-design. Do not run it to manufacture something to hand over. It builds a new run from the authored prose — no attestation, receipt or gate clearance carries across — so handing over its reference would promise more than it holds. Report the loss and hand over with the dial.

This is for managed design runs. Nothing else has a run to short-circuit onto.

The dial

One skill, two weights:

• light — print a continuation prompt; nothing written.
• full — write the handover.md context packet and print instructions pointing at it.

Default by context: phase boundary, dispatch conclude, or complex in-flight state → full; a simple "continue this in a fresh context" → light. The user's explicit ask overrides.

Light: the continuation prompt

Print:

/route
(path to the governing artifact and the next obvious task)

If the next task is implementation-bound, include the specific artefacts to read (design.md, plan.toml, the active runtime phase sheet) and name any unresolved assumptions or design questions the next agent must assess before declaring readiness. Have the continuation prompt cite the open ids from the governing slice's ## Harvest — the open DEC / QUE / ASM (decisions / questions / assumptions) — so the next agent inherits the live open items, not a stale story.

Full: the context packet

Write .doctrine/*/<nnn>/handover.md — the disposable, gitignored "start here" for the agent picking up the next Phase or otherwise continuing the work.

It is scaffolding for the next session, not a durable record: durable facts live in persisted artifacts, notes.md or the memory store (doctrine memory); the handover only points at them and frames the immediate work.

For a phase:

• Read the just-completed state/.../phases/phase-NN.md (findings, hand-forward) and the slice notes.md ## Harvest section for the produced / learned / open ids.
• Confirm the next phase's scope from plan.toml (EX/VT are authoritative).
• At a dispatch conclude (SL-170 S6): embed the slice verify-vt <id> VT summary block and a one-line S1 regression status (from the verify beat's check regression diff) in the packet — surfacing any UNCHECKABLE / WAIVED / Fail gap at handover, not at audit.
• Emit the sections below into handover.md
• Print instructions (with path to handover.md) addressed to the next agent

For another artifact:

• adapt as appropriate — the harvest-first step above still applies
• author or replace handover.md in the most relevant artifact's folder
• Print instructions (with path to handover.md) addressed to the next agent

You must include a clear startup instruction (eg /route) with path to handover.md.

Then: STOP

Shape (sections to emit) for a phase packet

• Where this is — phase status ladder + commit refs; what is DONE, what is now.
• Reading List — pointers to design/plan/notes, relevant other artifacts / code, key source file:lines. What the next agent should ingest to build context efficiently.
• Artifacts / pointers — scope / design / plan / notes / specs. Optional / reference material.
• Terrain — the surface to ride, not refork; e.g. what the last phase built. Point to it described elsewhere, or summarise if it is not.
• Next actions — the literal doctrine slice phase <ID> PHASE-NN --status in_progress (status is the --status flag, not a trailing positional) / other obvious and immediate next step(s).
• Procedure & Caveats — risks, unknowns and open decisions. Process guardrails (command, fill the sheet, TDD, commit, flip status, etc).
• Environment notes — build/gate/lint specifics; pre-existing dirty files to leave.

Rules

• handover is gitignored + will be deleted — never put the only copy of a durable fact here.
• Link to durable artifacts, don't repeat their contents.
• Supersede stale notes explicitly; do not leave contradictory guidance.
• Don't summarize commands or procedures from skills. The skill gets skipped. Accidents happen. Do reference the skill; describe relevant state.
• Terse. Fragments fine. Reader is an agent, not human reviewer.