Hand-off

A hand-off is the transfer of a task from one agent (or employee) to another mid-execution — passing context, state, and authority so the work continues without restart.

Real workflows cross specialists. A sales lead hand-off goes from AI SDR → human AE. A support escalation hands from AI Support → senior human. A multi-agent system hands from a planner agent → executor agent. The quality of a hand-off is the quality of the context bundled with it: full transcript, current state, what's been tried, recommended next step.

Example

AI SDR books a meeting; hands the lead to the human AE with a 200-word brief covering company, role, pain hinted at in replies, and what was promised. AE walks in informed.

How OpenLabor uses it

OpenLabor packages a structured hand-off bundle on every escalation so humans pick up without re-reading the whole thread.

Is a hand-off the same as an escalation?

Escalation is one type of hand-off — to a higher authority. Hand-offs include peer transfers too.

Related: escalation, agentic-workflow, multi-agent.

AI Labor Glossary