Preserve session context with ak:handoff

Use ak:handoff when a fresh agent session must continue the same work without rediscovering its purpose, decisions, evidence, and blockers. The Skill produces a compact conversation handoff, shows it in the response, and saves the same redacted content as a project report.

Choose ak:handoff for session continuity

Use ak:handoff when

• You are ending a work session before the goal is complete.
• You are switching to a fresh agent or a smaller context window.
• Important decisions, rejected approaches, blockers, or verification state would otherwise be lost.
• You want the next session to verify current state against source artifacts.

Choose another workflow when

• You want a Git-derived status report across branches, worktrees, plans, and repository history. Use ak:watzup.
• You need to commit, push, or open a pull request. Use ak:git.
• You want an implementation plan rather than session context. Use ak:plan.

Run a cross-Kit product-launch handoff

Use a two-way handoff when Marketing owns the launch outcome and Engineer owns a bounded implementation. The handoff transfers context, not authority.

1. Marketing approves the audience, user outcome, positioning, assets, acceptance criteria, target window, measurement, and non-goals.
2. Marketing creates a handoff naming the exact engineering deliverable and unresolved decisions. It excludes credentials, customer data, and broad publication or production authority.
3. Engineer runs ak:plan, obtains scope approval, implements with ak:cook, and verifies with ak:test.
4. Engineer returns changed behavior, preview route or artifact, test evidence, known limitations, rollout/rollback needs, and decisions Marketing must make.
5. Marketing validates the result against the launch contract before campaign, publication, spend, or measurement work continues.

The receiving Engineer should reject a handoff that lacks acceptance criteria, names a date without dependencies, combines unrelated deliverables, or assumes deploy/merge authority. Split it into a bounded deliverable or send the missing decision back to Marketing.

Prepare the project and runtime

Before you start:

• Complete Onboarding, and confirm Engineer Kit is installed for the runtime and scope you are using.
• Open the project and make its instructions and relevant plans available.
• Identify the next session's focus and the current goal.
• Locate a previous handoff for the same focus when one exists.
• Review the conversation for secrets, private URLs, customer data, and personal data that must not enter the report.

Run the Skill

/ak:handoff "Continue the authentication migration after the failing integration test is diagnosed"

/ak:handoff "Continue the authentication migration after the failing integration test is diagnosed"

$ak:handoff "Continue the authentication migration after the failing integration test is diagnosed"

The optional argument names the next-session focus. The Skill has no published mode flag.

Understand what happens during a run

1. The Skill reads project authority. It checks repository instructions, relevant plans, and the previous handoff for the same focus when available.
2. The Skill captures the goal and current state. It distinguishes completed, in-progress, blocked, and unverified work.
3. The Skill records decisions. It preserves rationale, rejected approaches, dependencies, and known traps without inventing new decisions.
4. The Skill points to evidence. It references plans, issues, decisions, commits, diffs, tests, and files instead of copying them.
5. The Skill redacts sensitive material. It removes secrets, credentials, private URLs, customer data, and personal data while retaining safe location pointers when needed.
6. The Skill writes two matching outputs. It returns one fenced Markdown block and saves the same content as a timestamped report.
7. The Skill prepares re-entry. It ends with a short prompt telling the fresh agent which files to read and to verify the handoff before acting.

Keep the report safe

The handoff must stay inside the agreed project or report location. It must not duplicate root instructions, include credentials or private data, introduce new decisions, or turn open work into unverified commands for the next agent.

The source-defined workflow does not require Git mutation, network access, publication, an external provider, or a paid service.

Verify the result

A complete handoff contains:

• The short title, generation time, and next-session focus.
• The goal and why it matters.
• The factual current state.
• Key decisions and their rationale.
• Rejected approaches and known traps.
• Verification status, including checks not yet run or not yet passing.
• Relevant files and source pointers.
• Open work expressed as state and dependencies.
• A short fresh-agent verification prompt.

Confirm that the fenced response and saved report match and that redacted values cannot be reconstructed from the text.

Troubleshoot or continue

Know the current limits

• The handoff reflects the conversation, inspected plans, and available evidence; the next session must verify it against the repository.
• Redaction protects the report only when sensitive material is recognized and removed; review the artifact before sharing it.
• The Skill preserves session context, not a complete repository audit.
• Cursor slash invocation is user-verified evidence, not proof of full runtime parity.
• Stable and beta package the same ak:handoff workflow and report shape.