Direct answer
A handover document is the work, its record, and its decision in one link.
Work changes hands constantly now: from you to a client, from one AI to another, from the person who started a project to the person who inherits it. The handover document is what crosses that gap, and most of them fail in the same quiet way. They are written afterwards, from memory, as a summary: the goal in a sentence, the outcome in a paragraph, the files attached if you are lucky. What they never carry is the evidence: which steps actually ran, what the outputs were as saved, what is still undecided. The receiver starts by trusting the summary, and the first surprise restarts the job. This page sets out the full contents a handover has to carry, and the form that carries it as a record instead of a write-up.
Updated November 2, 2026. First published November 2, 2026. The two handover records quoted below are real and public, with their decision states read back from the live service on November 2, 2026.
The contents list: six parts, none optional
One, the goal and the deliverable list as agreed, so the receiver knows what the job was for. Two, the steps that ran, in order, because the path explains the result. Three, the outputs as saved, attached as themselves and never paraphrased, because a description of an output is a claim about it. Four, the evidence for the steps: a verifiable receipt per job, checkable by the receiver at https://zambo.dev/verify/, proving the saved results were not changed since they were saved. Five, the open items, named as open: the step that failed, the question nobody answered, the delivery checked and still awaiting a decision. Six, the decision state: who accepted or rejected what, and when. A handover that carries all six lets the receiver start working in minutes. Drop four and the receiver must trust you; drop five and the receiver inherits your surprises; drop six and the client conversation starts over.
Why the written summary keeps failing
The summary fails for structural reasons, not laziness. It is written at the end, when the writer is summarizing a session they half remember, and it is written by the side the record would check, so every gap in it is invisible to the reader. It also has no fixed address: it lives in an email, a chat, a document that gets forwarded and forked until nobody knows which copy is current. And when the receiver is another AI, the summary competes with a context limit: long pastes get trimmed, and the trimming is silent, so the receiving model may never see the constraint that mattered. A handover record answers each failure directly: it is assembled during the work, it sits at one address, and its contents are the steps and outputs themselves, with the summary as a reading layer on top rather than the whole substance.
The record form: how a Zambo handover carries the six parts
Work run through the Zambo endpoint, https://zambo.dev/mcp, returns a verifiable receipt on every call, across 153 tools with 36 on the default surface. The receipts follow AER-1, published as IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1-26, and its public conformance corpus at https://zambo.dev/aer1/corpus.json carries 126 vectors and 129 checks. The wrap-up call then seals the session into the handover: goal, steps, saved outputs, receipts, open state, and decision state at one address. The two public records below show real decision states, read back from the live service:
Accepted: the decision is on the record
- Status: accepted, decided_by client, decided_at 2026-10-16T14:31:51.146Z, release_hint ok_to_release.
- Steps: 4 steps total, 4 checked.
- aer1_version: draft-zambo-aer1-26.
- Open the handover or read its acceptance.json.
Pending: checked, and still waiting on a decision
- Status: pending, release_hint hold.
- Steps: 5 steps total, 5 checked.
- aer1_version: draft-zambo-aer1-26.
- Open the handover or read its acceptance.json.
The accepted record is a handover that completed its purpose: the receiver can see what was delivered, that every step checks, and that the client decided, with the decision dated 2026-10-16T14:31:51.146Z on the record itself. The pending record shows the honest middle state most real handovers live in: the work is checked and the decision is outstanding, which the record says out loud instead of leaving the receiver to discover it.
Sending it: to a client, to a teammate, to another AI
The sending is one link, and the receiving experience differs by who receives. A client opens the handover, reads the deliverables and the checked steps, and records the decision on the same page, so the acceptance becomes part of the document they accepted. A teammate opens it and starts from the open items, which are named rather than buried. Another AI picks the handover up and continues the job from the record: the steps, the outputs, and the state arrive as one object, and picking up in another AI is always free, so a switch of models mid-project costs no re-explaining and no toll. For work that must stay between named parties, a private handover keeps the link from opening on its own; the receiver accepts through their token. Choose the public form for evidence you want widely checkable, and the private form for the handovers that carry the work itself.
What a record does not settle
A verifiable receipt proves the saved result was not changed since it was saved; a handover record does not prove the work was good, finish the open items it names, or make a decision the client has not recorded. It carries the state of the job honestly, including the unfinished parts. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI handover document?
It is the record that moves a job from one pair of hands to another: the goal, the steps that ran, the outputs as saved, the receipts for those steps, what is still open, and the decision state, in one place the receiver can open. In Zambo the handover is a living record rather than a static file: work run through https://zambo.dev/mcp returns a verifiable receipt on every call under AER-1, IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1-26, and the wrap-up seals the session into a handover at zambo.dev/handover/ followed by its ID. The receiving AI picks the work up from that record and continues it, and picking up in another AI is always free.
What must a handover document contain?
Six things, and a handover missing any of them restarts an argument later. One: the goal and the deliverable list as agreed. Two: the steps that ran, in order. Three: the outputs as saved, not a description of them. Four: the evidence for the steps, meaning the receipt for each job, checkable at https://zambo.dev/verify/. Five: the open items, named as open, including anything checked but not yet decided. Six: the decision state, who accepted or rejected what, and when. A pasted chat summary usually carries one and two, gestures at three, and drops four, five, and six entirely, which is why handovers written by hand fail quietly.
Why not just paste the chat into the next AI?
Because the receiving AI cannot tell what in the paste is true. A pasted summary is the sender's account of the work: it can skip the failed step, round off the output, and present a draft as the delivered version, and nothing in the text lets the receiver, or the client reading later, test any of it. It also decays on contact: long pastes get trimmed by context limits, so the parts that fall off are random. A handover record carries the steps and outputs themselves, each with its receipt, so the receiver continues from evidence. The receiver still reads a summary, but the summary rides on a record that can be checked line by line.
Can a handover stay private between me and the receiver?
Yes, and the distinction matters. A public receipt can be opened by anyone holding its link, which is what makes it strong evidence to send a client. A private handover is stricter: the link alone does not open it, and the receiving side accepts through its own acceptance token, a behavior verified first-hand: a resume code by itself does not unlock a private handover. Private handover links are a Zambo Pass feature. Use public records for work you want checkable by anyone, and private handovers for client work, credentials-adjacent material, and anything only the named receiver should open.
What does it cost to hand work over this way?
The free tier is 20 calls + 1 wrap-up free every day; picking up in another AI is always free, so the receiving side never pays to continue your work. For $0.99, a Day Pass makes the endpoint, https://zambo.dev/mcp, unlimited for 24 hours, no subscription: get the Day Pass. Ongoing use is the Zambo Pass at $29 a month or $290 a year, and $19 a month for $ZAMBO holders, which adds private handover links, your branding, and the approval record as PDF and JSON files.