AG05 · Agent Activity

Agent Handoff Receipt

Purpose Timestamped, inspectable record of what one agent passed to another — context carried forward, instructions included, scope granted, and constraints attached to the delegation. A first-class accountability record for inter-agent communication, not a log entry.

Use when Any agent-to-agent handoff occurs in a multi-agent run. Required whenever the orchestrator delegates to a subagent or one agent passes a task to another. The receipt must be generated at the moment of handoff and available for inspection throughout the run and after.

Do not use As a substitute for the audit trail — the handoff receipt covers inter-agent communication specifically. Do not collapse multiple handoffs into a single entry; each handoff event generates its own receipt. Do not render handoff data as a generic log line.

Failure mode prevented Opaque agent delegation — humans unable to reconstruct what instructions an orchestrator gave to a subagent, what context was passed, or what scope was granted, leaving inter-agent behavior unauditable.

Component UI

Component UI coming soon

Overview

Design rule

Every inter-agent handoff produces a receipt. The receipt is a first-class record — not a log entry, not a summary. It must be inspectable on demand, not reconstructed after the fact.

The Agent Handoff Receipt captures the full content of a delegation event: what the originating agent passed, what instructions were included, what scope was granted, and what constraints were attached. It is generated at the moment of handoff and is available for inspection from that point forward — during the run, in the post-run audit, and in any compliance or governance review.

Handoff receipts are used by both HC09 Spawn-Time Consent Gate (which shows prospective delegation for authorization) and AA01/AA03 audit components (which use receipts as part of the post-run accountability record). The receipt is the source of truth for what was passed between agents — it must be immutable once generated.

Anatomy

Handoff header: From agent, to agent, timestamp, handoff sequence number
Context carried: What conversation, task state, or data was passed to the receiving agent
Instructions included: The literal instructions or prompt sent to the subagent
Scope granted: What permissions and tool access were delegated
Constraints attached: Any restrictions placed on what the receiving agent may do
Authorization reference: Link to the HC09 spawn-time consent event that authorized this handoff

Accessibility

Related Components

HC09 Spawn-Time Consent Gate — the authorization event that precedes each handoff
AG01 Agent Activity Timeline — the chronological view that contains handoff events
AG02 Tool Execution Log — the tool-level companion to the handoff record
AA01 Audit Trail Widgets — the single-agent audit that handoff receipts feed into
AA03 Aggregate Audit Rollup — the network-level audit that composes all handoff receipts
Pattern 03: Multi-Agent Orchestration — Stage 04: Handoff & Context Visibility

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