What is context handoff?

Context handoff is a concept in personal epistemology: 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.

This concept is part of Phase 26 (Multi-Agent Coordination) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for multi-agent coordination.