Glossary
Agent Handoff
The transfer of an ongoing task and its associated context from one agent to another, preserving state and continuity.
What is Agent Handoff?
Handoffs occur when specialized expertise is needed, workload balancing is required, or agents reach capability limits. Successful handoffs require transferring conversation history, user preferences, task state, and relevant metadata. Poor handoffs frustrate users and degrade outcomes through lost context.
Handoff protocols specify triggers, target selection, context packaging, and acknowledgment mechanisms. Monitoring handoff success rates identifies agents with scope mismatches or capability gaps.
Example
A general customer service agent handles initial inquiry about a complex technical issue, then hands off to a specialized technical support agent with full conversation transcript and customer account details.
How Signet addresses this
Signet tracks handoff events in audit trails, measuring context preservation quality and outcome success. Handoff patterns inform capability scoring and help identify specialization opportunities.
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