session-handoff

Captures the durable state of a long-running session into a single artifact that a fresh agent can pick up without ambiguity. The canonical solution to context-window exhaustion in autonomous loops.

This is the cross-session continuity primitive Shannon previously lacked. Used by autopilot-runner and loop-runner when a run nears its turn budget without convergence and needs to continue in a fresh context.

When to use

• Active session is near context window saturation and work is incomplete.
• Pausing autopilot/loop overnight or across days.
• Switching from one human reviewer to another mid-task.
• Closing out a working day with a half-done feature.
• User says "hand off this work" / "save this for tomorrow."

When NOT to use

• The work is actually done — close the session, don't hand off.
• The session is fresh and has plenty of context left — premature handoff is overhead.
• The information would fit in a single sentence — just write a one-line memory with memorize.