Handoff brief

A handoff brief is a Markdown document for the receiving agent. Handshake creates it from stored session data.

Brief sections

Section	Contents
Source	Source agent, working directory, start time, last activity, and message count.
Original goal	The first substantive user request.
Current state and next actions	The checkpoint summary or a stored assistant message.
Settled decisions	Decisions that the receiving agent must treat as current.
Conversation	Full or sampled user and assistant messages. Tool output is omitted.
Receiving-agent instructions	Rules for continuing the work.
Project knowledge	Current project brief and repository map, when available.

Handshake includes all substantive messages when the session has 50 or fewer. For a longer session, Handshake selects 50 messages:

This selection keeps the original goal, important intermediate decisions, and recent state.

Ask an agent:

preview the handoff brief for my authentication refactor session

The agent calls generate_brief. This action does not restore the session.

The restore packet is not part of the handoff brief. It is a safety check that precedes the brief. The packet can show:

Review the packet before you confirm the restore.

Include:

Do not include an unsupported assumption as a fact.