handoff

handoff is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Codagent-AI/agent-skills. It costs 81 tokens per session (706 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A focused handoff note that captures one part of a conversation so another coding agent can continue the work. It records the goal, current state, decisions, open questions, next steps, and relevant files.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when transferring debugging, implementation, or investigation work to another agent session. It writes the summary to `handoff.md`, using a user-provided path when one is specified.
Why use it?
It prevents the next agent from having to reconstruct important context from the entire conversation. It also keeps the handoff limited to the aspect the user names.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the codagent plugin — 27 skills 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 skills/codagent-ai/agent-skills/handoff
Any agent
npx skills add Codagent-AI/agent-skills --skill handoff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Codagent-AI/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install codagent, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 skills.

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/skills/codagent-ai/agent-skills/handoff.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/codagent-ai/agent-skills/handoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/codagent-ai/agent-skills/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/codagent-ai/agent-skills/handoff.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 706 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 $0.00081 $0.00706
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00353
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00141
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00071

Measured 4d ago against content hash 955f2ce4104d, 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.

skills/handoff/SKILL.md · 79 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Handoff

Write a focused summary of a specific aspect of the current conversation so a fresh agent can pick up where this session left off.

This is NOT a full conversation summary. The user's prompt tells you which aspect to capture. If the aspect is unclear, ask for clarification before proceeding.

What to capture

For the aspect the user specified, write:

  1. Objective — What the user is trying to accomplish (the goal, not the history).
  2. Current state — Where things stand right now. What's done, what's in progress, what's blocked.
  3. Key decisions — Decisions made during this session that the next agent must honor, with brief rationale.
  4. Open questions — Unresolved issues, trade-offs still being weighed, or things the user hasn't decided yet.
  5. Next steps — Concrete actions the resuming agent should take first.
  6. Relevant files — Paths to files that were created, modified, or are central to the work.

Omit any section that has nothing meaningful to say. Keep it tight — the resuming agent needs signal, not narration.

Output

Write the summary to handoff.md.

Determining the output location:

  1. If the user specified a path in their prompt, use it.
  2. If a project configuration (e.g., AGENTS.md, openspec config, or similar conventions) specifies a change directory, write there.
  3. Otherwise, determine the relevant change slug from context (the change being worked on, or a kebab-case slug from the topic) and write to ~/.agent-skills/changes/<slug>/handoff.md.

Do not ask the user to confirm the location. Just write to the resolved path.

Template

# Handoff: <aspect being handed off>

## Objective

<!-- What the user is trying to accomplish -->

## Current State

<!-- Where things stand: done, in progress, blocked -->

## Key Decisions

<!-- Decisions made this session that the next agent must honor -->
- **<decision>** — <rationale>

## Open Questions

<!-- Unresolved issues or trade-offs -->

## Next Steps

<!-- Concrete first actions for the resuming agent -->

## Relevant Files

<!-- Paths to files central to this work -->

Read the full file on GitHub · 79 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 · 79 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 955f2ce4104d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository Codagent-AI/agent-skills (30 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 706 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.

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