What is claude-code-handoff-skill?

claude-code-handoff-skill is a small add-on skill for Claude Code, the AI coding assistant, that solves a specific problem: long coding sessions tend to degrade over time. As a session goes on, the AI can start forgetting earlier decisions, retrying approaches that already failed, and describing files in ways that no longer match reality. Starting a brand new session fixes that degradation, but normally throws away everything the old session had learned. This skill fixes that by writing a file called HANDOFF.md at the root of your project. Running the command /handoff at the end of a session tells Claude to check the real state of your repository and write this file, so the next session can pick up exactly where the previous one stopped, without repeating the same dead ends. At the start of a new session, saying "resume from the handoff" tells Claude to read that file, recheck it against the current state of the repository, raise any open questions, confirm the plan with you, and then continue working. The key idea is that nothing gets written into the file purely from memory. Before writing anything, Claude runs git status, git log, and git diff to see what actually changed in the repository, rereads every file the handoff will mention to catch anything that has since changed, and reruns your tests so a claim like tests pass is only written if it was just confirmed. Every statement in the file is labeled either verified, meaning it was checked during this handoff, or as recalled from memory and not yet rechecked. The resulting file is kept to roughly 250 to 400 lines and covers the current goal and verified state, the decisions made and why, failed approaches and the exact reason they failed, known traps found in the codebase, an ordered list of next steps, and open questions only the user can answer. Older handoff files are not deleted, they get archived into a .handoffs folder, and dead ends that are still relevant get carried forward automatically. Installation is a simple git clone followed by copying the folder into the .claude/skills directory, either globally or for a single project, with no other dependencies or setup required. The project is released under the MIT license.