Claude Handoff

Hand the current conversation off to a fresh background agent that picks up the work immediately.

307,829 stars 25,903 forksAI, LLMs & Agents Plugin marketplace

Install

Claude Code plugin
/plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills

The repo is a Claude Code plugin marketplace. Run /plugin afterwards to pick the plugin that includes this skill.

skills CLI (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more)
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill claude-handoff
Manual install
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git /tmp/skills
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/skills/skills/in-progress/claude-handoff ~/.claude/skills/claude-handoff

Personal skills live in ~/.claude/skills. Use .claude/skills in a project folder to share a skill with your team.

From the SKILL.md

Write a handoff summary of the current conversation so a fresh agent can continue the work. Save it to the temporary directory of the user's OS, then launch a background agent seeded with it as its prompt: `claude --bg --name "<descriptive name>" -- "$(cat <summary file>)"`. Passing the file keeps the shell from running backticks or expanding `$` in the summary. It starts in the current working directory and returns immediately; the user manages it with `claude agents`.

Always pass `-n`/`--name` with a descriptive name (e.g. `--name "Fix login bug"`); it sets the display name shown in the job list, session picker, and terminal title.

Include a "suggested skills" section in the summary, naming which skills the next agent should call the Skill tool for.

Do not duplicate content already captured in other artifacts (specs, plans, ADRs, issues, commits, diffs). Reference them by path or URL instead.

Redact any sensitive information, such as API keys, passwords, or personally identifiable information, since the summary becomes the agent's prompt.

If the user passed arguments, treat them as a description of what the next session will focus on and tailor the summary accordingly.
Read the full skill on GitHub

Details

Skill name
claude-handoff
Path
skills/in-progress/claude-handoff/SKILL.md
License
MIT
Repo updated
30 October 2026

FAQ

What does the Claude Handoff skill do?

Hand the current conversation off to a fresh background agent that picks up the work immediately.

How do I install the Claude Handoff skill?

Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add mattpocock/skills. Skills go in ~/.claude/skills (personal) or .claude/skills (project), and Claude loads them automatically when a task matches the description.

Is Claude Handoff popular?

It lives in mattpocock/skills, which has 307,829 GitHub stars and 25,903 forks, and is included in 1 curated skill list.

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