claude-handoff

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The problem

You close Claude Code. You come back tomorrow. The conversation is gone: the decisions you made, the three things you already tried that didn't work, what was left to do. You re-explain everything. Or worse: Claude walks back into the same dead end you already ruled out.

--continue reloads the whole conversation (and bloats it). /compact summarizes aggressively. CLAUDE.md has to be maintained by hand. None of them capture why something didn't work.

The solution

claude-handoff is a pure plugin (hooks + skill + markdown) that does two things:

• On close → distills the session into .claude/HANDOFF.md: summary, decisions, dead ends, next steps, git state, and how to resume.
• On resume → re-injects that handoff as context, automatically (including after a compaction).

During the session  ──  /handoff   ──▶  .claude/HANDOFF.md          (live model, best quality)
On close            ──  SessionEnd ──▶  distill in background  ──▶  .claude/HANDOFF.md   (safety net)
On resume/compact   ──  SessionStart ─▶  HANDOFF.md  ──▶  context restored

Install

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add andresleecom/claude-handoff
/plugin install claude-handoff@claude-handoff

That's it. Zero dependencies, nothing to configure.

How it works

Piece	Event	What it does
inject.mjs	SessionStart (startup/resume/clear/compact)	Reads .claude/HANDOFF.md and injects it as context.
/handoff	manual	The live model (which already has everything in context) writes the best possible handoff.
capture.mjs → distill.mjs	SessionEnd	Safety net: if you forgot /handoff, it distills the transcript in the background with a cheap model (Haiku). It never blocks the close.

The handoff lives at .claude/HANDOFF.md and is added to your .gitignore by default: these are personal notes, they don't clutter the repo.

The format (the differentiator)

Other plugins store "memory". claude-handoff explicitly captures what you should not repeat:

# 🤝 Handoff — my-project
_Last updated: 2026-06-04 18:20 · Branch: feature/auth_

## 📝 Summary
Implementing login. The happy path works; token refresh is missing.

## ✅ Decisions made
- JWT in an httpOnly cookie — why: avoids exposing the token to JS.

## ⛔ Dead ends (do not repeat)
- In-memory session tokens → lost on server restart. Dropped.
- Refresh inside an axios interceptor → infinite loop on the 401. Abandoned.

## 🔜 Next steps
- [ ] POST /refresh endpoint with token rotation.

## 🌳 Git state
- Branch: `feature/auth`
- Uncommitted: src/auth/session.ts

## ▶️ How to resume
`npm run dev` and test login at /login. Start with src/auth/session.ts.

vs. other options

	claude-handoff	claude-mem	memory-toolkit	CLAUDE.md
Automatic capture on close	✅	✅	✅	❌
Automatic re-injection on resume	✅	✅	✅	partial
Dead-end tracking	✅	❌	❌	❌
100% human-readable (markdown)	✅	❌ (DB)	✅	✅
Git-aware (branch/commits/dirty)	✅	❌	partial	❌
Zero dependencies	✅	❌	❌	—
Cross-platform (incl. native Windows)	✅	partial	partial	✅

Configuration

Environment variable	Effect
CLAUDE_HANDOFF_AUTO=0	Disables the automatic safety net (manual /handoff only).
CLAUDE_HANDOFF_MODEL	Model for the background distiller (default claude-haiku-4-5-20251001).

FAQ

Does it work offline? Re-injection and /handoff do (they're local). The automatic safety net on close needs a model call.

How much does it cost? Re-injection and /handoff add no extra cost. The safety net uses Haiku (cheap) and only when you didn't write a fresh handoff. Disable it with CLAUDE_HANDOFF_AUTO=0.

Does it work on Windows? Yes. The hooks are pure Node.js (no bash/jq), tested on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Does it commit HANDOFF.md? Not by default: it's added to .gitignore as personal notes. Remove it from there if you want to share it with your team.