handoff

handoff is a skill for Claude Code from goldenwo/claude-state-drift. It costs 73 tokens per session (566 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A session handoff is a saved summary that lets the next coding session quickly understand the project's current state. It updates project state first and then records progress, remaining work, blockers, and verification notes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when finishing work, handing a project to another session, or recording the next step and unresolved issues.
Why use it?
It prevents important context from being lost when a session ends or the conversation becomes too long.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the claude-state-drift plugin — 3 skills, 6 commands, 4 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when finishing work, handing a project to another session, or recording the next step and unresolved issues.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff
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.

Any agent
npx skills add goldenwo/claude-state-drift --skill handoff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/goldenwo/claude-state-drift

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-state-drift, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills, 6 commands, 4 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/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for handoff

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/goldenwo/claude-state-drift/handoff.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 73 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 566 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00073 $0.00566
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00283
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00113
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00057

Measured 10d ago against content hash ef188bda359c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, 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 10d 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 · 31 lines

What it actually says

handoff

End the session cleanly: state.json catches up, then a narrative handoff is composed and parked for the next session. The NEXT session's orientation auto-loads it (same project only) until a newer handoff or state write supersedes it.

Procedure

  1. Update state first. Run the full update-state skill contract (draft → show diff → WAIT for approval → write → state-validatestate-history appends). If nothing material changed, say so and skip the write.
  2. Compose the narrative. Write the handoff body in THIS session's voice — the things state.json deliberately excludes. Use exactly this shape:
    • # Handoff — <date>: <one-line theme>
    • > **TL;DR:** 2-3 sentences: where things stand + the single honest next move
    • ## Where we are — commits/branches/PRs landed this session, working-tree state
    • ## What's NEXT — the next move and why; an honest STOP if nothing validated remains
    • ## What's LEFT — blockers, flakes, dangling threads, don't-re-attempt items
    • ## Resume notes — gotchas, how-to-verify, carry-forward context Keep it under ~5KB — the orient render truncates at 6KB.
  3. Write it. Save the body to a temp file, then: state-handoff write --body-file <tmpfile> (session id defaults from CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID). Confirm the tool's output line to the user.
  4. Tell the user the handoff is parked and will auto-load in the next session for this project.

Anti-patterns

  • Composing from the transcript summary instead of your live understanding (compaction-grade output).
  • Writing the handoff WITHOUT the state update — the supersession rule keys on state.json freshness.
  • Padding with content already in state.json (deliverable lists, version history) — the orient block carries those.
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. 10d ago First seen · 31 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A ef188bda359c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository goldenwo/claude-state-drift (1 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 566 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 2026-08-31.