Change and Handoff Protocol¶
When an agent finishes a unit of work — whether handing off to a human or to another agent — it communicates the following:
What changed¶
A concise summary of the files touched and the substance of the change. Not a line-by-line diff narration — a summary that lets the reader decide whether to look closer.
What was validated¶
Which checks from validation-requirements.md were run, and their outcome. If something could not be validated (e.g. no test suite exists yet for a given area), say so explicitly rather than implying it was checked.
What remains open¶
Anything not finished: follow-up work, unresolved questions (link to docs/governance/open-questions.md or the local work plan's "Decisions required" section), and anything still requiring human review per human-review-and-approval.md.
Where the work plan/log lives¶
A pointer to the work plan in work/active/ or work/archive/ (see
planning-and-work-logs.md), if one was created, so the next
reader/agent can pick up full context without re-deriving it.
Principle¶
A good handoff lets the next person (human or agent) continue without re-reading everything from scratch, and without silently inheriting unstated assumptions. When in doubt, over-communicate what's open rather than implying a task is more finished than it is.