Handover

Handover

Package a finished change so its reviewers never reconstruct intent from the diff. Write for a reviewer holding the diff and nothing else — no planning docs, no session, no knowledge that either exists.

Resolve the task

The input is any partial reference — ticket id, slug, a planning artifact's path — or nothing, meaning the session's task; in a fresh session, infer it from branch name and recent commits. Resolve it to the task's planning home: its <id>-<slug>/ directory in the project's planning directory, or its flat <id>-<slug>.* files in a shared family directory. One clear match → proceed, stating the home and artifacts found. Inferred, or several candidates (-vN, …) → confirm first. An explicit reference matching nothing local → stop and ask; never guess.

Gather

Read these, skipping what doesn't exist:

1. Task artifacts — every <id>-<slug>*.md in the planning home: ticket, requirements, plan, decisions log, prior review and handover rounds, whatever else matches.
2. Related tickets — one hop only: parent (climbing higher only past thin containers), direct predecessors/successors, explicit relations, family-directory siblings; never expand their own relations. Local .TICKET.mds first; fetch from the tracker only when a relation has no local file and looks load-bearing for a why — in doubt whether to fetch, ask.
3. The session, when it produced the change: decisions, pivots, constraints.
4. The diff against the target, plus commit subjects.

An earlier artifact — a ticket review, a prior round — counts only where nothing later settled the point.

Each source once, no deeper than the artifact needs: skim the diff whole, deep-read only the files you will name in the Review guide, and never rebuild history commit by commit — which commit changed what is the diff's job, not yours.

Then match the plan's steps and acceptance criteria against the diff both ways — planned but absent, present but unplanned. Done when every source is read or confirmed absent and every planned item is matched.

Never invent rationale

State a "why" only where a source gives it. A deviation nothing explains is asked of the author once; unanswered or unaskable, it ships flagged in plain words ("nothing records why — worth confirming"), since it may be an unintentional gap rather than a decision. Sourcing is your gate, not the reviewer's reading: it decides what you may write, and never appears in the text. When not sure, always ask. Never guess.

The artifact

<slug>.HANDOVER.md in the planning home; already taken → <slug>.HANDOVER-2.md, -3, … — never overwrite. No planning home → present the content and ask where to save it. Its body is paste-ready as the PR description, and stands alone:

• Mention only what the reviewer can open — a tracker URL, or a file you verified is committed on the branch. Everything else — planning docs, decisions log, session, commit hashes — is neither linked nor named: write what it says ("this was meant to …"), never where it says it. A colleague's clarification is stated as what it settled, grounded in something openable ("the goal is X, which needs"); naming the colleague is the last resort.
• Related tickets go unmentioned unless a why depends on one ("built this way to prepare for ") — then cite its tracker URL.
• Under a screen, ~400 words; the caps below are limits, not targets.
• Never hard-wrap: forges (e.g. GitHub) render newlines in PR bodies as line breaks — one line per paragraph or bullet.
• Plain reviewer-facing wording, never this skill's vocabulary. Before drafting, actually invoke use-conversational-language — reciting its rules from memory does not count.

Sections, skipped only when truly empty:

1. What and why — 2–3 lines.
2. Decisions worth knowing — at most 5 lines, each: what was chosen or what departs from the plan, its why or the missing-why flag, and where in the code to see it.
3. Review guide — the few files where judgment matters and why; the rest named as mechanical.
4. Known gaps — at most 3: shortcomings, assumptions, open questions.

Done when every section is filled or knowingly skipped, nothing reads as verified that wasn't, and nothing in the text points at something the reviewer cannot open.

Boundaries

• Modify no source files; the handover doc is the only file written.
• Never push, or open/comment on a PR — publishing is the user's explicit call.