How do you hand off work between people and AI agents?

Short answer: Ask your agent to write a handoff and save it in Gryz. It records what's done, what was decided and why, and the exact next step. Whoever comes next, a teammate in another time zone or an agent in another tool, reads that one page and carries on.

Where work gets lost

Work rarely stops because it's hard. It stops because the context stayed behind:

• Across time zones. You log off in New York. A teammate in Bengaluru starts their day with a question only you can answer, and you're asleep for most of their working day.
• Across tools. You did the research in Claude and the build is in Cursor. Cursor has never heard of any of it.
• Across agents. A long chat gets too big, you start a new one, and you spend the first 20 minutes explaining the project again.
• Across people. Someone goes on leave or moves to another team, and the reasons behind the work go with them.

Models are becoming commodities. Context isn't. A handoff is how that context moves.

What a good handoff holds

Gryz's Session handoff skill uses the same short shape every time:

Two of these do most of the work:

• The reasons. "We retry three times" gets undone by the next person. "We retry three times because Stripe retries too" doesn't.
• The next step. "Finish the webhook" starts a conversation. "Add the idempotency key test in the webhook test file" starts the work.

How to do it

You need Gryz connected to your agent. Then:

1. Ask for the handoff

Paste this at the end of your session:

Use the Gryz session-handoff skill to write a handoff for this work. The next session will focus on [what comes next].

Your agent checks Gryz for related decisions and any earlier handoff, then drafts the page. If one exists, it updates that one instead of starting a second copy.

2. Read the draft

The agent shows you the draft before saving. Check two things:

• Is the next step right?
• Is anything in there that shouldn't be? The skill tells the agent to leave out secrets and private details, but you're the last check.

3. Save it

Say yes, and it's saved as a Gryz document. It's private to you unless you say otherwise. If the work belongs to a project, the agent can file it there too.

4. Pick it up

Your agent gives you a link and a line to paste into the next session:

Read my handoff at <link>, then check the next step with me before you start.

That last part matters. The new agent confirms the plan with a person before it acts.

Three ways to use this

Across time zones. This is the heart of follow-the-sun development. At the end of your day, save the handoff to your company workspace. Your teammate's agent reads it in the morning, and they start on the next step instead of waiting for you to wake up. When they finish, they update the same page, and it's waiting for you.

Across agents. Finish the research in Claude, then open Cursor. Connected to the same Gryz account, Cursor reads the handoff and has your decisions in hand. The same works for ChatGPT, Codex and any app that connects over MCP.

Across a team. A person moves on to something else. Their handoff stays with the project next to its documents, tasks and memories, so the next owner gets the reasons as well as the files.

Why not a chat summary?

You can ask any chatbot to summarize a chat, and that's a fine start. The trouble is where it ends up:

• It's stuck in one tool. A Gryz handoff can be read by anything you've connected, so your next tool isn't decided for you.
• It sits on its own. A pasted summary doesn't link to anything. A handoff points to the spec, task and pull request, so it stays short.
• It gets lost. A Slack message scrolls away. A handoff sits with the project and, with document search on, turns up in search.

Limits worth knowing

• It's a snapshot. A handoff changes only when someone or some agent updates it. If the work moved on, say so in the next one.
• It's only as good as what it was told. Your agent writes from what it can see, so read it before you save.
• Sharing outside your account takes a choice. Handoffs start private. To send one to someone outside your workspace, ask for a public link. Anyone with that link can read it, and public links expire: 72 hours on a free account, 30 days on Pro, and never on Pro Plus.
• Company access follows your permissions. In a company workspace, a handoff filed in a restricted project is readable only by people with access to that project.
• Gryz doesn't do the work. Your agents still do that. Gryz holds what they need to know. Agents come and go. Gryz remembers.

More on this topic: Shared context for AI agents.

FAQ

What is follow-the-sun development? It's a way of working where teams in different time zones pass work along at the end of each day, so it keeps moving around the clock. A team in the US might hand off to a team in India in the evening and get the work back the next morning.

How can US and India teams hand off work without losing a day? The gap is about 10 to 13 hours, so there's little live overlap. Don't rely on a call. Leave a handoff at the end of each day with the decisions, the exact next step, and who answers each open question. The team in India starts from that page, then updates it for the US team to read in the morning.

Can AI agents keep work moving between time zones? Yes, with a person in charge at each end. Gryz doesn't run your agents, but each team's agents read the same handoff, documents, tasks and memories. So the next shift's agent starts with what the last shift learned.

Does the next person need a Gryz account? Not to read a public link. To read a private handoff, they need access to it, and their agent needs a Gryz connection.

Will the next agent see my whole chat? No. It sees what's in the handoff and anything else saved in Gryz. Your chats stay in the tool you had them in.

Does the handoff replace my spec or plan? No. It links to them. A handoff is a short map of where things stand, not a second copy of the record.

Can I send a handoff to a tool that isn't connected to Gryz? You can always copy the text of the page and paste it in. To read and update it directly, the tool needs a Gryz connection.

Is it free? Yes, with a free Gryz account. See pricing.