handoff

handoff is a command for coding agents from mikekelly/promode. It costs 71 tokens per session (701 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command that writes a handoff document for another coding agent to continue work later.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before pausing, compacting, or handing over a task so the next agent can understand the project state and continue from the correct point.
Why use it?
It preserves the current goal, decisions, file locations, and unfinished work when the conversation ends or its context is cleared.

Command

Part of the promode plugin — 2 commands, 19 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/mikekelly/promode/handoff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mikekelly/promode

Or install promode, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 2 commands, 19 agents, 2 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for handoff

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/mikekelly/promode/handoff.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/mikekelly/promode/handoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/mikekelly/promode/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/mikekelly/promode/handoff.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 701 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00071 $0.00701
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00351
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00140
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00070

Measured 4d ago against content hash 2e091f18ffb1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

handoff scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/promode/commands/handoff.md · 34 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 34 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

The conversation is about to end or be cleared. A fresh agent will continue without any of this conversation's history — write it what it needs to pick up cleanly.

This command serves the promode principle that context is precious and conversation state is ephemeral: when a session ends its working memory is lost, so anything the next agent needs must be persisted — ephemeral state to a handoff doc, durable knowledge into the CLAUDE.md-rooted knowledge graph.

Where

Save to the OS temp directory ($TMPDIR, falling back to /tmp), e.g. <tmpdir>/handoff-<feature>.mdnot the repo. A handoff is ephemeral conversation state, not durable project knowledge (durable knowledge belongs in the agent-knowledge graph rooted at CLAUDE.md). Tell the user the absolute path at the end so they can point the next agent at it.

What to capture

Write for an agent with zero context. Be concrete — file paths, not vague descriptions; the why behind decisions, not just the what.

  1. Goal & current state — what we're doing and why; where we are (planning / implementing / debugging); whether the codebase is working, broken, or half-done.
  2. Decisions made & why — especially trade-offs a fresh agent would otherwise re-litigate or accidentally undo.
  3. What's pending — remaining work and the single next immediate step; known blockers.
  4. Orientation — the few files to read first, non-obvious patterns/gotchas, and any user preferences expressed this session.
  5. Open questions — unresolved decisions waiting on the user.
  6. Suggested agents/commands — which promode agents or commands the next session should reach for.

Keep it lean

  • Reference, don't duplicate. Anything already captured in commits, PRDs, plans, ADRs, issues, task docs (the per-task docs written at planning time), or the knowledge graph → link it by path, don't restate it. The handoff is the connective tissue between those artifacts, not a copy of them. If the work used task docs, point the next agent at them — they already carry the live per-task state, so the handoff just names the open loop and where to look.
  • Redact secrets — no API keys, passwords, tokens, or PII in the document.
  • If the user passed an argument, treat it as the next session's focus and tailor the doc to it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 34 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 34 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A 2e091f18ffb1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handoff is a command published in the GitHub repository mikekelly/promode (21 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 701 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.