Handoff pickup

Read a handoff written by the handoff skill and resume the investigation without re-deriving anything — but also without blindly trusting it. A handoff is a snapshot from an earlier moment; some "confirmed facts" may have gone stale. Your job is to load it, restate the goal, re-verify the cheap load-bearing facts, and confirm with the user before acting. Do not start changing things on the strength of the doc alone.

Process

1. Find the handoff. Handoffs live in ~/.claude/handoffs/<topic-slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md.

• If the user named a topic, match it against the slugs.
• Otherwise pick the most recently modified: ls -t ~/.claude/handoffs/*.md 2>/dev/null | head.
• If several are recent and the topic is ambiguous, list the candidates (slug + date)

and ask which one — do not guess.

• If the directory is empty or missing, say so plainly and stop; there is nothing to

pick up.

1. Read it in full with the Read tool — the whole doc, not the first screen. Pay

special attention to Next steps, Constraints, Ruled out, and Blockers.

1. Re-verify the cheap facts. For each Confirmed fact that is fast to re-check

(a version, a curl, an ls, a service status) and that the next action depends on, re-run the check now. The doc records what was true; you act on what is true. Note any fact that has drifted.

1. Restate, in one sentence, the single next goal — the immediate end state you are

about to work toward, drawn from Goal + the first Next step. Not a summary of the whole doc; the one thing you're about to do.

1. Confirm before proceeding. Use AskUserQuestion to check understanding before

touching anything. Ask about:

• whether the restated next goal is still the right one (priorities may have shifted

since the handoff was written),

• any genuine ambiguity in Next steps or Constraints that changes what you'd do,
• any fact that re-verification showed has drifted (surface it, don't bury it).

Keep it to the questions whose answers actually change your next move — if the handoff is unambiguous and the facts still hold, ask the single confirming question and move on.

1. Only then proceed — and honor every rule in the handoff's Constraints section

(e.g. sudo / system-state changes are user-run; services that must not be restarted).

Output before you ask

Lead your reply with, in this order:

• Picked up: <path> (<topic>, written <YYYY-MM-DD>)
• Next goal: one sentence.
• Still true / drifted: one line if any re-verified fact changed; omit if all hold.
• Watch out: the constraints and open blockers that bound the work, condensed.

Then ask your clarifying question(s). Do not edit files, run state-changing commands, or start the next step until the user has answered.