handoff

handoff is a skill for Claude Code from vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin. It costs 81 tokens per session (1,015 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A handoff record for preserving work state between coding sessions. It has a stop mode for saving progress and a start mode for restoring it later.

In plain words
What is it for?
Save the current task, progress, and next steps before stopping, then resume from the project's handoff file in a later session.
Why use it?
It reduces the context lost when a session ends, crashes, or must be restarted. The record distinguishes session continuity from a pull-request handoff.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the vergil plugin — 15 skills, 1 agent, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Save the current task, progress, and next steps before stopping, then resume from the project's handoff file in a later session.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/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 vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin --skill handoff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install vergil, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 15 skills, 1 agent, 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/skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/handoff/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/handoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/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/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin/handoff.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 1,015 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 $0.00081 $0.01015
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00508
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00203
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00102

Measured 9d ago against content hash dac92f872fa2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, 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 9d 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 · 130 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 130 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Handoff

Overview

Standardize session-to-session continuity when an agent must restart mid-work (plugin updates, context limits, crashes). Replaces ad-hoc memory files with a disciplined, template-driven handoff protocol.

Not the PR handoff. This is session-continuity state, distinct from the .vergil/pr-template.yml PR handoff used by the implement/audit pair.

Two modes:

  • /handoff stop — Capture current work state before killing the session.
  • /handoff start — Resume from the last handoff file after restarting.

Memory policy exemption. This skill writes to the memory directory as part of its documented workflow. Because the human invokes /handoff explicitly, the write has implicit approval and is exempt from the global memory management policy's approval requirement.

Mode: stop

Write a structured handoff file to the project memory directory:

<memory-dir>/handoff_active.md

Template

The agent fills in the template from conversation context. The agent writes the content — this skill provides the structure.

---
name: active handoff
description: Session handoff — <one-line summary of in-progress work>
type: project
---

## In-progress task

<What the agent was doing when stop was called. Phase, step, branch name,
PR numbers — enough to resume without re-deriving.>

## Completed this session

<Bulleted list of completed items with PR/issue URLs.>

## Remaining work queue

<Numbered list in execution order. Each item is one sentence.>

## Key context

<Anything non-obvious that the next session needs to know: workarounds in
effect, known failures, blocked items, environment state.>

## Restart command

<The exact slash command or instruction to resume.>

Behavior

  1. Fill in the template from conversation context.
  2. Write the file to <memory-dir>/handoff_active.md.
  3. Add a pointer to MEMORY.md (or update the existing pointer): - [Active handoff](handoff_active.md) — <one-line summary>.
  4. Confirm the handoff file was written and tell the user it is safe to kill the session.

Read the full file on GitHub · 130 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. 9d ago First seen · 130 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A dac92f872fa2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository vergil-project/vergil-claude-plugin (2 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 1,015 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.

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