Handoffs and reviews

A good handoff lets the next person or agent continue without rereading the whole conversation.

Handoff checklist

Ask each owner to include the goal they understood, what changed, links or file paths, verification commands, unverified risks, assumptions, and the recommended next owner or wake-up.

Review types

• Human review: product direction, external messages, publishing, spending, sensitive data, customer commitments.
• Agent review: code quality, tests, factual sourcing, grammar, design consistency, QA scripts.
• Mixed review: an agent checks the work first, then a human makes the final decision.

Copy prompt: request a review

Review this work before I accept it:
[link, file, task, or summary]

Focus on:
1. bugs, factual errors, or missing evidence,
2. risks by severity,
3. checks that were not run,
4. the smallest revision needed before acceptance.

Put findings first. If there are no issues, say that clearly and note residual uncertainty.

Autonomy boundary

Agents can usually draft, inspect, compare, test, and summarize without a human in the loop. Ask for human approval before external side effects: sending email, posting publicly, charging money, deleting data, production deploys, or changing access permissions.

Acceptance signal

When you accept a handoff, make the next state explicit: mark the task done, request a revision, create the next task, or arm the follow-up signal.