What does it mean that context hand-off between agents?

When one agent finishes and another starts the relevant context must transfer cleanly.

Example: You spend an hour in deep analytical mode, mapping out the root causes of a recurring project failure. You identify three structural issues and draft a remediation plan. Then you switch to your communication agent — the part of you that writes updates for stakeholders. But as you open the email draft, you realize you cannot remember which of the three issues you decided was highest priority, what specific evidence supported that ranking, or what the remediation timeline was. The analytical agent did excellent work. The communication agent received almost none of it. The hand-off destroyed the value that the previous agent created. Now compare this to a version where, before switching, you spend ninety seconds writing a structured summary: top issue, supporting evidence, proposed action, timeline. The communication agent picks up this summary and writes a stakeholder update in ten minutes that would have taken forty without it. Same agents. Same work. The only difference is whether the hand-off carried context or dropped it.

Try this: Identify a transition you make regularly — between deep work and meetings, between planning and execution, between research and writing, between your professional role and your personal life. For the next five days, insert a two-minute hand-off protocol at this transition point. Before you leave the first mode, write down three things: (1) what you accomplished, (2) what decision or conclusion you reached, and (3) what the next agent needs to know to act on it. Before you enter the second mode, read what you wrote. At the end of five days, review your notes. You will see exactly how much context you were previously losing at this transition — and how much you recovered by making the hand-off explicit.