Rite Handoff

$rite-handoff: chat-only context, into a fresh-agent doc

DevRites' workspace .devrites/work/<slug>/ already captures everything that should persist (spec, plan, tasks, decisions, evidence, drift, review). This skill captures what the chat is holding that is not in the workspace, so a fresh agent (or the same user after /clear) can pick the work up without re-reading the transcript.

Read core.md first: its "Persistence before stopping" discipline is exactly what this skill executes. The other rule files load on demand.

Then read the explicit or active workspace's state.md directly.

Where to write

• Active feature exists → .devrites/work/<slug>/handoff.md (overwrites the previous handoff; the workspace is the canonical home for this slug).
• No active feature → OS temp dir ($TMPDIR / /tmp / %TEMP%) as rite-handoff-<ISO-timestamp>.md. Print the absolute path after writing.

Before you write: sync, don't duplicate

For each of these, write the content into its canonical home first, then merely note in the handoff that the sync happened:

• Open mid-flight question → append to questions.md (with best-guess attached if possible).
• Decision discussed but not yet recorded → append to decisions.md with the why, not just the what.
• Assumption about behaviour / API / user intent → append to assumptions.md.
• Drift event raised but not fully resolved → update drift.md with the current resolution status (open / asked-user / repaired).
• Files modified in chat not yet in touched-files.md → append to touched-files.md.

The handoff doc itself then says "synced N entries into decisions.md", not the entries themselves. The workspace is the canonical store; the handoff is the chat-only delta.

What to include in the handoff

1. Suggested next action. ONE command, not three options. If the active feature is mid-phase, name the next rite-* command. If a question blocks progress, point at it. If the user passed [what the next session will focus on], tailor this section to the named focus. Where you were mid-thought, quote the most recent next-step verbatim from the chat (the exact sentence describing what to do next) so no nuance is lost to paraphrase.
2. What just happened in this chat (3-5 bullets). Distil: do not transcribe.
3. External references that exist only in chat: URLs, Figma links, screenshot paths, video timestamps the user pasted. List as references; do not embed.
4. Live assumptions the agent is acting on that the workspace doesn't reflect yet (after the sync above, this section should be near-empty: flag anything that remains).
5. How to resume: fixed boilerplate (see template below).

What NOT to include

• Anything already in spec.md, plan.md, tasks.md, state.md, decisions.md, evidence.md, review.md: link by path instead.
• git diff output: the next agent runs git diff themselves.
• The full conversation transcript: distil.
• Secrets (API keys, tokens, PII, credentials). Redact aggressively.
• New ideas the user didn't confirm. A handoff records what happened and what's next. Leave out fresh suggestions, scope the user didn't agree to, and redesigns you thought of. Capture the state, not your opinions about it.

Output template

Loaded on demand from reference/handoff-template.md. Fill in each section and write to .devrites/work/<slug>/handoff.md (or to a temp file when no active feature). Then use the compact reply contract (devrites-lib/reference/reply-contract.md):

Done: handoff written for <slug | session>.
Changed: handoff.md plus synced workspace artifacts <n>
Evidence: not applicable; chat-only context persisted
Open: <none | unsynced caveats>
Next: <single resume command>
Record: <absolute path to handoff.md>
↻ Hygiene: /clear

Print the absolute path in Record: so the user or next agent can open it without searching.

Session hygiene

Close with the one-line hygiene advisory + the single resume command. This skill is the pre-/clear bridge, so it's where the advisory matters most (context-hygiene.md):

↻ Hygiene: /clear