00 / 05Workflows

The handoff: carry a project between chats, tools, and machines

Long conversations get slow, cluttered, and expensive.

Most people push on anyway, because starting fresh means re-explaining everything. There is a better move, and it takes one sentence: ask for a handoff. It is an easy habit, and one of the most powerful ones we know.

6 min
03 figures
02 links
Intro
Updated Oct 2026

Fig 01A handoff is a sealed note that travels: from this chat to the next one, to another tool, or to another machine.

Inside

01What a handoff is
02When to ask for oneFigureListTable
03How to askCode
04What makes a good oneList
05The handoff that updates itselfFigureNote

01 / 05

What a handoff is

A handoff is a short document the assistant writes about the current state of a project:

Notes

the goal, the decisions made and why, what is done, what is still open, the exact file paths, links, and IDs involved, and the very next step. It is written for whoever continues the work next, whether that is a new chat, a coding agent, a collaborator, or you on another machine, so they can pick up without re-reading the whole conversation.

It is not a summary of the conversation. Nobody needs to know that you tried three headline options at 4 p.m. They need to know which one you chose, why, and where it lives.

02 / 05

When to ask for one

For power users, and anyone who wants to be one, the handoff is how you keep a project moving without dragging a heavy conversation behind it.

Fig 02One document, five destinations. The conversation stays behind; the handoff goes wherever the work goes.

Ask for one when:

A chat is getting long, slow, or full of dead ends. A fresh thread with a handoff is cleaner than scrolling past the junk, and it saves credits and working memory.

You are about to hit a limit, or you want to continue tomorrow without losing the thread.

You are switching tools: from a chat assistant to a coding agent in your editor, or the reverse.

You are moving between computers, platforms, or accounts. The handoff travels; the conversation does not.

Someone else takes over. Dice Gamble and Marcel Patillo trade handoffs between sessions on The Open Experience itself.

Table5 rows

Situation	What the handoff must carry
New chat, same tool	Goal, decisions, open questions, next step
Chat to coding agent	Repo path, branch, files touched, how to run and test, conventions
Another computer or account	Links and IDs instead of local-only paths, where files are synced, credentials by name only
A collaborator	Everything above, plus what they are allowed to decide without asking
Before a break	Where you stopped mid-task, and the first thing to check when you return

03 / 05

How to ask

One line does it: Write a handoff for this project so a new chat can continue. Add where it is going if that changes the content:

Markdown

# Handoff · [project name] · [date]

## Goal
What this project produces, in one sentence, and who it is for.

## Where things live
Repo, folder, or workspace path. Links and IDs, not descriptions.

## Decided, and why
- Decision · reason. One per line.

## Done
- What exists now, and where to find it.

## Open
- Questions nobody has answered yet. Who can answer them.

## Next step
The single first thing to do. Then the one after it.

## Watch out
Anything that will break if you do not know it.

Notes

a coding agent, my other laptop, Dice. Then paste the result into the new chat as the first message, or drop it into the project as a document.

The template below is the shape we use. Each line is a prompt for what belongs there.

04 / 05

What makes a good one

Facts over narrativeState, not story.

Paths and linksA handoff that says "the deck" is useless on another machine. One that says the exact file or URL is not.

Decisions with reasonsThe reason is what stops the next chat from relitigating the choice.

Open questions, namedUnknowns are the most valuable lines in the document.

No transcriptIf it reads like minutes of the conversation, ask again and say so.

05 / 05

The handoff that updates itself

The strongest version is a standing document.

Fig 03The handoff that updates itself: every session starts by reading it and ends by updating it.

Do this today

Open your longest-running chat and ask: "Write a handoff for this project so a new chat can continue." Read it, fix anything it got wrong, start a new chat with it as the first message, and notice how much lighter the work feels.

Notes

Keep a handoff.md in the project, and end every working session by asking the assistant to update it. The next session starts by reading it. Most assistants can keep a file like this where a project lives; in Claude, a project doc works well for it. Over time it becomes the one true record of the project, written for the next person, which is usually you.

02 links

Resources

Every link this breakdown leans on, in one place.