Session Handoff Skill

Purpose

Large context windows degrade in instruction adherence, reasoning precision, and tool accuracy as token counts accumulate. Long sessions fill with superseded plans, aborted scratchpads, and repetitive error traces. Resetting to a fresh session restores performance, but discarding context blindly introduces state loss, hallucinated progress, and repeated mistakes.

The session-handoff skill standardizes how an agent snapshots active state. It translates ephemeral working memory into an actionable, verifiable bridge document for the next session.

Workflow: Ending a Session (6 Steps)

Run this sequence when an agent session reaches operational limits or when halting work:

Audit Git and Workspace State Run git status -s and git diff --stat to establish grounded reality. Never rely on chat memory for what was modified. Identify modified, untracked, and staged files.
Capture Goal State vs. Implemented Reality Define the original objective in one sentence. Document precisely what has been verified as working (with passing test commands or runtime checks) versus what remains partial or unverified.