The problem: the job changes hands, the record does not
Agent work rarely stays with one agent. A research agent gathers, a writing agent drafts, a reviewer agent checks. A long job outlives the model that started it. A person goes to sleep and their agent keeps working, or the reverse. Every one of those transfers is an AI agent handover, and the usual way it happens is the weakest link in the whole run: the sending agent writes a summary, and the receiving agent builds on the summary.
A summary is narration. It says what the sender believes happened. It can skip the step that failed, drop the decision that constrained everything after it, and state a result the tools never produced, and none of that is detectable later, because nothing underneath the summary was fixed in place when the work ran. The receiver pays for it twice: once when it trusts work it never checked, and again when it redoes the checking from scratch.
How can my AI agent pick up where another AI left off?
Give the second agent the first agent's record, not a retelling of it. A Zambo HANDOVER packages the session state, the decisions, and the finished work with its AER-1 receipts attached, so the next agent reads the package, checks the receipts, and picks up from the saved state. The receipts prove the saved result was not changed since it was saved, and the judgment about whether the work was right stays with the receiver. Add Zambo to your AI so your agents can hand work over this way.
What has to travel
- The goal. The job in the words it was commissioned in, so the receiver continues the same job and not a retelling of it.
- What is done, with proof per step. Each finished step, and for each one a verifiable receipt saved when the step ran: the tool that ran, the recorded inputs, the saved result, fixed under a hash commitment. The receiver can recompute any step instead of believing it.
- The exact next step. Stated before the transfer, so momentum survives the switch.
- Every decision, with its reason. Decisions are what summaries quietly drop and new agents happily re-argue. Written into the record, they stay decided.
- Sources checked, and sources not checked. The honest half of the record. What nobody verified is named as not checked, not smoothed over.
- The receiver's decision. Accept or flag, recorded on the handover itself by whoever receives it, never by whoever did the work. The transfer is not complete until that decision exists.
Handover is not the routing handoff
Routing handoff: control moves inside one system
Agent frameworks use "handoff" for a routing event: one agent in a running system passes the conversation to another agent in the same system, the way a triage bot passes a chat to a billing bot. It is real and useful, and it solves a routing problem. Nothing leaves the system, nothing is delivered, and there is no record a third party could check afterward.
Agent handover: the job moves between systems
An AI agent handover moves the job itself: from Claude to ChatGPT when a usage limit hits, from an agent to the client who commissioned the work, from one team's agent to another team's. The record has to be portable, checkable by the receiver without an account on the sender's system, and complete enough that the work continues with the sender gone. Zambo's HANDOVER is built for this second sense, and the receipts underneath it are what make the record checkable instead of rhetorical. The receipts underneath are AER-1, the agent execution receipt standard created by Brennan Zambo, published as IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1-26, with a public conformance corpus of 126 vectors and 129 checks that independent implementations pass.
How an agent handover works in Zambo
- The work runs where it leaves a record. Work run through Zambo's 153 tools saves a verifiable receipt per step as it runs, under AER-1, an open IETF Internet-Draft (draft-zambo-aer1-26). Nobody writes the record up afterward; it accumulates while the work happens.
- The sender wraps up. One instruction at the end of the session: hand this job over with the goal, what is done, what is next, every decision, and the receipts attached. Zambo assembles the handover as a single record and returns a link.
- The receiver checks, then decides. Whoever opens the link, a person or the next AI, sees the record, can recompute any receipt at zambo.dev/verify, and records accept or flag on the handover itself. A flag names what is wrong; the job does not silently proceed on a bad record.
- The work continues from the record. The next agent starts from the recorded state: goal, done steps, decisions, next step. No re-briefing, no pasted recap, no trusting the previous agent's memory of itself.
When the receiver later has to answer for the work, the same record serves as the audit trail for work a client is disputing, and the step by step review of the whole job is an agentic workflow audit they can run from the handover alone.
A handover carrying its own proof: a live example
An outside agent studio wired AER-1 receipts into its standing-check deliveries, so its work reaches the client with the evidence attached instead of promised. One of its delivery records is public: receipt 28c79cde, whose saved bytes recompute to exactly the output hash the record commits to. Anyone can rerun that check; it needs no account and no trust in the studio or in Zambo.
The same record shows the part most delivery notes hide: its own audit flags three of its claims as weakly evidenced, and reports issuer authentication as not checked. That is what a handover is for. The receiver does not get a polished claim of done. They get the work, the proof, and the gaps, in one place, and they decide.
AI agent handover: job handover between agents, or support handover to a human?
Two different jobs share this name, and telling them apart matters because they move different things. An AI agent handover of a job between AI agents moves the work itself: the goal, the current state, the decisions already made, the saved result of each finished step, and a verifiable receipt for each step, so the next agent continues the same job from the record instead of from a retelling. A customer support bot to human handover moves a conversation: when a support bot cannot resolve a chat, it routes the person and the chat history to a human agent, and the job being handed over is the conversation, not a body of work. Zambo covers the first kind. Its handover packages a job at one link, the receiving AI checks the receipts before building on the work, and a receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved, not that the result was right.
For the step by step version, see how to hand over work between AI agents.
Questions, answered
What is an AI agent handover?
An AI agent handover is a job passed from one AI agent, model, or person to another as one checkable record. The record carries the goal, what is done with a verifiable receipt for each finished step, the exact next step, every decision made along the way, and a decision slot the receiver fills in: accept the work, or flag what is wrong. The receiving agent starts from the record itself, not from the sending agent's summary of it.
How is an agent handover different from a routing handoff in an agent framework?
A routing handoff is an event inside one running system: one agent in a framework passes control of a conversation to another agent in the same system, and nothing leaves the system. An AI agent handover moves the job itself between systems, models, or people: the record has to be portable, checkable by the receiver without an account on the sender's system, and complete enough that the work continues without the sender. Routing changes who is talking. A handover changes whose job it is, and carries the proof of the part already done.
What does the receiving agent actually get?
One link. Behind it: the goal in the words the job was commissioned in, each finished step with the receipt saved when that step ran, the decisions with their reasons, the sources that were checked and the ones that were not, and the exact next step. The receiver checks the receipts that carry weight, records accept or flag on the handover itself, and continues the job from the recorded state.
Does a handover prove the work was done right?
No, and a handover that claims to is overselling. It proves what was recorded and that the saved record was not changed since it was saved: each step's receipt fixes the tool that ran and the saved result under a hash commitment computed at execution time. Whether the work was right is the receiver's judgment, now made against the actual record instead of a recap.
What is a session handover?
A session handover packages one working session so the work can continue somewhere else: the goal, each finished step with the verifiable receipt saved when it ran, the decisions and their reasons, and the exact next step. The next session, whether it belongs to a person, another app, or another model, starts from that package instead of a recap. On Zambo the package is the handover record itself, and the receiver records accept or flag on it before continuing.
What is an AI work handover?
An AI work handover is a job moved from one AI, app, or person to another as one checkable record rather than a summary. The record carries the goal, the finished steps with a verifiable receipt for each, the decisions made along the way, and the exact next step, and the receiver checks the receipts that carry weight before accepting. It proves what was recorded and that the saved record was not changed since it was saved; whether the work was right stays the receiver's judgment, made against the record.
How can my AI agent pick up where another AI left off?
Give the second agent the first agent's record. A pickup works when the receiving agent gets the goal, the finished steps with a verifiable receipt for each, the decisions made, the current state, and the exact next step, and checks the receipts that carry weight before building on them. Chats and summaries fail here because they cannot be checked and they drop state. A Zambo handover is that record as one link, so the second agent continues the job instead of interviewing you about it.
How do I hand off a half-finished task from one AI to another?
Freeze the job where it stands and pass the record, not a summary. List what is done with a verifiable receipt for each finished step, mark what is half done and what was never checked, name the next action, and hand the receiving AI that record as one link. The receiver verifies the receipts for the steps it will build on and treats anything unrecorded as not done. Zambo handover packages exactly that, and the free tier covers 20 free calls per day, so a first handoff costs nothing to try.
How do I hand off an AI session to another app?
Package the session as a handover record instead of copying the chat: the goal, each finished step with its receipt, the decisions made, and the exact next step, at one link the other app opens. The receiving app checks the receipts it will build on, records accept or flag, and continues from the recorded state. On Zambo that package is the handover itself, and the free tier covers 20 free calls per day.
How can the agent that did the work prove a client accepted it?
By pointing to the acceptance record on the handover itself. When a client checks the steps behind a Zambo handover link, they record accept or flag on the record, and that decision is saved next to the work it was made on. The agent does not have to argue from chat screenshots: the client decision sits on the same record as the receipts. It proves the decision happened; it does not prove the work was good.
Can one AI agent hand work to another agent?
Yes, when the work moves as a record rather than a retelling. The sending agent packages the goal, the finished steps with a receipt for each, the decisions, and the exact next step; the receiving agent checks the receipts that carry weight and continues from that state. A Zambo handover is that package at one link, readable across apps and models, and the agent to agent handover guide on this hub walks that case end to end.
Run your next handover on a record
Work run through the Zambo MCP endpoint at zambo.dev/mcp saves its result at execution and returns a verifiable AER-1 receipt for every call, so the handover assembles itself when the job changes hands. The Day Pass is $0.99 for 24 hours of the full endpoint, and checking any receipt is always free at zambo.dev/verify. Start a handover at zambo.dev/handover.
AI work handover: the session handover that carries its own receipt
An AI work handover is the general case this page answers: work started in one place, finished in another, with the record moving instead of a retelling. When the receiving side is another agent, the package works as an AI agent handoff receipt: the handover itself is the receipt for the transfer, naming what was handed over, which steps are proven by their own receipts, and what the receiver accepted or flagged.
What is a session handover? A session handover is the same move at the scale of one working session: the session ends, in one app or with one model, and the work continues elsewhere. The session's goal, finished steps with receipts, decisions, and exact next step are packaged once, and the next session, human or agent, starts from that package. A handover report for an AI project is the client-facing read of the same record: what was done, what proves it, what was decided, and what happens next, without handing over raw chat history.
Start the next session on the same record. A handover only travels if both sides can reach the record, and one MCP endpoint puts it under the clients people already switch between: add Zambo to Claude Duet, add Zambo to Meta Muse, add Zambo to dots, add Zambo to Goose, add Zambo to Open WebUI, or add Zambo to LibreChat. Whichever side runs the next step, the receipts and the handover live at the same links.
A handover is only as strong as the receipt the receiving side can check. The AER-1 badge kit carries that same verifiable-receipt proof outward, as an embeddable badge for the pages and profiles where the work is shown.