The handoff skill — carry context between sessions
Area: Workflow · Level: Intermediate
Every session gets dumber as it fills up — and a fresh session remembers nothing. The handoff skill solves exactly that: it packages the essentials of one session so the next one continues where you left off, but with clean context. This video takes the idea to the intermediate level: not just writing handoffs, but writing them well — disposable, safe, and purposeful — and even using them as a homemade sub-agent that explores on your behalf and comes back with the learnings.
What you'll learn
- Why handoffs are disposable: they live in a temp folder, not in the repo, and get thrown away after use
- How to redact secrets before writing the handoff, so keys and tokens never travel into the next session
- Why pointers — file paths, branch names, commands — beat pasting full content into the note
- How to state the next session's purpose, so it starts focused instead of re-exploring everything
- The homemade sub-agent trick: launch a session that investigates a problem and returns the learnings in a handoff
For whom
For anyone already working with Claude Code daily who feels the cost of long sessions: degrading context, cold starts, repeated work. It helps to have seen the basic handoff flow first.
After this video
Pair it with the written lesson Handoff — continue in a fresh session: that's the base three-step flow this video refines and pushes further.