The Universal Handoff Template
A prompt that produces a handoff brief to move AI work between workplaces — chat to coding agent, anywhere to anywhere — without losing the decisions, drafts, and context you've built up.
The handoff template moves work between AI workplaces — chat to coding agent, chat to workflow platform, anywhere to anywhere — without losing what you’ve built. It’s the third option almost nobody knows exists: most people either stay in the wrong tool paying friction forever, or start over and lose weeks of accumulated decisions. This does neither.
The asset you’re protecting is context — see context window for why long threads get expensive and worth moving. For routing the work to the right AI workplace, see The Four Questions.
The Universal Handoff Template
I need to move this work to [TARGET WORKPLACE]. Please produce
a handoff brief I can paste into the new session.
The brief should include:
1. ONE-PARAGRAPH SUMMARY of the project and its purpose
2. KEY DECISIONS we've made and the reasoning behind each
3. CURRENT STATE — what's been produced, what's in progress,
what's outstanding
4. OPEN QUESTIONS we haven't resolved yet
5. RECOMMENDED NEXT STEP in the new workplace
6. CRITICAL CONTEXT that would be lost in transition if not
captured here
Format the brief so it works as the opening message of a fresh
session in [TARGET WORKPLACE]. Aim for thorough but not
exhaustive — the goal is enough context to continue the work,
not a complete transcript of what we've done.
Why it works By the time a project outgrows its workplace, the thread has become an asset — months of decisions, drafts, and reasoning you don't want to recreate. The brief extracts the asset in a form the new workplace picks up cold. It's also a thinking tool even if you never migrate: asking the current session to summarize the state of the work reliably surfaces decisions you didn't realize you'd made.
Then what Read the brief before you trust it — add the constraint the AI didn't know about (there's always one), then paste it as the opening message in the new workplace and ask for a summary back to confirm it landed. Save every brief you produce in a handoffs/ folder; over a year it becomes an institutional memory of your own work. And know when to skip it: if the session is polluted with bad decisions or the work has fundamentally changed direction, a clean restart beats transporting baggage.
These prompts put the framework from Before You Build in your hands. More about the book →
Frequently asked questions
How do I move an AI project to a new tool without starting over?
Ask the current session for a handoff brief — a one-paragraph summary, key decisions and the reasoning behind each, current state, open questions, the recommended next step, and critical context — then paste it as the opening message in the new workplace and ask for a summary back.
Is the handoff template useful even if I don't migrate?
Yes. Asking the session to summarize the state of the work reliably surfaces decisions you didn't realize you'd made, so it doubles as a thinking tool.