Handoff

A handoff works because the next context can act on exact paths and facts without trusting the author's memory; any line the reader cannot verify from the artifact itself is decoration, not handoff.

Prompt

Write a handoff for this session in agentops-wt/train2-c: goal was
migrating regen to Go, I finished cli/internal/gates/regen.go and left
scripts/regen-all.sh untouched, tests are green, and the next context
still needs to update docs/CI-CD.md. Write it to .agents/ao/handoff/.

It's working if

Observable in the trace, without reading the prose:

• Every completed item names an exact evidence path like

cli/internal/gates/regen.go, not a chronological narration.

• The artifact lands at the caller-named authorized path; new CDLC evidence

uses an explicitly selected external non-Git location.

• Readback of that exact artifact path shows the content written.
• Only caller-supplied continuation text appears as next action; no

owner, tracker state, or verdict is invented.

Contract

Write a factual session artifact that another context can read. Include:

• caller-supplied goal and summary;
• completed artifacts and exact evidence paths;
• unresolved acceptance, findings, causal uncertainties, and risks;
• for a bounded goal, observed native stop/continuation state, measured remaining

allowance or explicit measurement gaps, and whether the one helper for the current HOLD incident was already used, with existing evidence references;

• optional caller-supplied continuation text;
• best-effort read-only repository identity when useful;
• the permitted startup association reference, source-store/project/work

identity, and observed runtime/session/context IDs or explicit unknowns;

• separately evidenced parent and resume links, observation provenance and

cutoff, and any supported work spans with available frozen source bounds and digests, following [session associations](../cass/references/SESSION_FORMATS.md#work-to-session-associations).

The caller records the work association at dispatch/start and observed native identity at startup through native comments/metadata or runtime facts. Handoff adds end-state evidence; it must not be the first or only work/session link. For an interrupted session, reconstruct only what permitted startup records and native observations support. Missing handoff, missing source, unknown length, unobserved ID or unproved relationship remains explicit; never invent an ID or assign an entire multi-work session to one bead. Preserve earlier unknown/failure observations when later evidence resolves a link.

Check source-owner and recipient/model/destination authorization before reading or copying association metadata. BD/Dolt is versioned and is not a secret store. Use permitted opaque locators where necessary; omit restricted excerpts and sensitive paths from unauthorized destinations. A locator grants no access.

Do not infer a next action, select work, assign ownership, consume the artifact, change tracker or Git state, classify a verdict, govern retries, or restart a runtime. Reading a handoff must not mutate it. A report saying HOLD or NEEDS_OPERATOR is not evidence that a native goal paused; record the actual observed state and operator action still required. Compaction or handoff never resets an allowance, repair bound, or helper incident. Retain informative red and withdrawn claims with their provenance instead of presenting knowledge as monotonically correct.

Named failure mode — optimistic closure: writing "done" for work whose evidence path does not exist, so the next context builds on a phantom.

Anti-pattern: narrating the session chronologically ("first I tried…, then…"). Corrective: record end-state facts — artifacts, paths, unresolved risks — and drop the journey.

Write the artifact to the caller-owned authorized handoff location. For new CDLC memory/episode evidence, require the caller-selected protected external non-Git location; missing routing is a reported gap, with no fallback file in the consumer checkout. Existing requested evidence stays preserved. Standalone non-CDLC handoff retains the explicit requested-proof default below. There is no permanent generic handoff store — an artifact nobody consumes is scratch.

The skill may write Markdown when that better serves a human. The existing ao session handoff and ao session rehydrate JSON compatibility behavior below does not itself establish startup associations or an external CDLC route; use only a command whose actual destination support matches the invocation.

Earlier default compatibility

JSON artifacts already stored under .agents/handoff/ remain read-only evidence. ao session handoff writes new JSON to .agents/ao/handoff/, while ao session rehydrate searches both directories and selects the newest lexical handoff id; if an identical filename exists in both, the canonical .agents/ao/handoff/ copy wins. No command moves or deletes the legacy files. Human-authored Markdown consumers receive the exact path, so they do not need to scan either default. This owning skill contract is the compatibility authority; no separate migration artifact is required.

Return the artifact path and stop.