Handoff

Handoff — verify you understood Claude's code

When Claude builds a feature, it is easy to merge the result without truly reading or understanding it. handoff turns passive review into an active check: it interviews the developer to confirm they read the code (where the logic lives) and understood it (why decisions were made, how it behaves), then reports a score and the spots to revisit.

This skill conducts an interactive quiz. Ask questions one at a time and wait for an answer before continuing. Conduct the entire quiz in the developer's language (match the language they are writing in).

Step 1 — Gather the material (hybrid source)

Build the quiz from two complementary sources:

1. Conversation context — what was built this session: the files touched, the key decisions and trade-offs, what was deliberately NOT done, and what could plausibly break. This is the source for the "why".

2. Git diff (when available) — to objectively anchor "where" and check that nothing important is missed. Run:

   • git rev-parse --git-dir to confirm a repo exists.
   • git diff --stat then git diff (covers unstaged + staged) to enumerate changed files and lines. Use real file:line locations from this diff.

   If there is no git repo, degrade gracefully and rely on conversation context alone — still produce a useful quiz.

Step 2 — Calibrate the number of questions

Scale to the size of the change (use the diff stat, or your best estimate from context if there is no git):

Step 3 — Generate a mixed question set

Cover both reading and understanding. Mix these types:

• Where (multiple choice). "Which file/function contains X?" Provide plausible distractors drawn from other real files in the change.
• Why (open-ended). "Why was approach X chosen over Y?", "What trade-off does this make?", "What would have broken if we hadn't done Z?"
• Behavior (multiple choice or open). "If input X arrives, what happens?", "How would you debug it if X fails?"

Favor the parts of the change that matter most (core logic, tricky edge cases, non-obvious decisions) over trivial boilerplate.

Write every multiple-choice question with 2 to 4 options so it can be answered by clicking (see Step 4).

Step 4 — Ask one question at a time (interactive by default)

Present a single question, wait for the answer, then evaluate it before moving on. Never dump the whole quiz at once.

Interactive mode — clickable answers

Multiple-choice questions are asked through the AskUserQuestion tool so the developer answers with the mouse instead of typing. Use it by default whenever the tool is available.

One tool call = one question (never batch several questions into a single call — that would break the one-at-a-time rule):

• question — the full question text. Include the file:line hint here on a retry, never the answer.
• header — a short topic label, ≤ 12 characters (e.g. Où ?, Hook, Retry flow).
• options — 2 to 4 entries, each with a short label (1–5 words) and a description giving the concrete detail (a real path, a behavior).
• multiSelect: true — only for genuine "select all that apply" questions.

Quiz-specific rules for the options:

• Exactly one option is correct (unless multiSelect), and its position is varied from question to question — never always first or always last.
• Never mark the correct answer. No (Recommended) suffix, no hedging wording in the distractors. Keep all labels and descriptions the same shape and roughly the same length, so the answer cannot be spotted by formatting.
• Distractors must be real — other files, functions or behaviors that actually exist in the change. Invented paths make the question trivial.
• The tool always offers an "Other" escape where the developer can type a free-form answer; grade it on its content like any typed answer.

Open-ended "why" questions stay typed: explaining a trade-off in your own words is the point, and picking a rationale from a list would turn recall into recognition. Ask them as plain text and wait for the reply.

Falling back to typed answers

Use plain text (numbered options the developer answers with a/b/c) when:

• the AskUserQuestion tool is not available in the current environment, or
• the developer asks for it — "no clicking", "text only", "pas de clic", /handoff --text.

/handoff --interactive (or "quiz me with clickable answers") forces the clickable mode back on. The quiz content, scoring and retry flow are identical in both modes — only the input method changes.

Step 5 — Evaluate each answer

• Correct → confirm briefly and move to the next question.
• Wrong or incomplete → point to the relevant file:line as a hint without revealing the answer, and invite a second attempt.
  • In interactive mode, the retry is a second AskUserQuestion call for the same question: keep the same options in the same order, and put the file:line hint in the question text. Do not remove the option the developer just picked — eliminating it would give the answer away.
  • If the second attempt is still wrong → reveal the correct answer with a short explanation, then continue.

Track the result of each question (correct / correct-on-retry / missed) to build the final score.

Step 6 — Final score and weak areas

End with:

• A score, e.g. Score: 4/6.
• The weak areas: the topics missed, each with a file:line pointer to re-read. Keep the tone encouraging, not punitive — the goal is to know what to revisit, not to grade harshly.

Optional: automatic suggestion (Stop hook)

This skill ships an optional, non-blocking Stop hook that suggests running /handoff when a session produced a large diff. It never forces the quiz. See references/install.md for setup and thresholds.