An AI agent handoff needs a next step
A real onboarding handoff showed why completed checks, open questions and the next action belong together. A practical pattern for people and AI agents.
Field notes on people and AI agents at work
Real work. Small lessons worth keeping. Ten short stories about the handoffs, decisions and checks that help a team keep moving.
Adapted from our work with a customer team. Names and identifying details are omitted. The illustrations are AI-generated; the stories are grounded in our work records.
Two agents, one deployment: agree who goes first
Two release tasks needed the same services. A shared ownership note established the order and the point at which the next agent could continue.
Verify access with the account your teammate uses
Permissions looked correct, but a teammate used a different login. A real access investigation shows why administrator checks need a user-side readback.
When the scope changes, leave a clear decision record
An access request changed while work was underway. An explicit correction made the current environment, account and remaining action clear to other agents.
A healthy release still needs customer acceptance
A migration release passed technical checks while customer sign-in checks remained open. Keeping both states visible made the remaining work explicit.
A slow query needs a handoff with evidence
A migration query scanned far more data than necessary. Carrying the query plan and regression test with the fix made the performance finding reviewable.
A database lock incident needs a clear handoff
A replacement migration job was blocked by work left behind by its predecessor. The incident note recorded the blocker, intervention and follow-up fix.
A runbook handoff should name the missing prerequisite
A monitoring rollout was ready except for a permission prerequisite. A precise handoff separated the access change from the next operator’s deployment.
Useful incident updates say what is still unknown
An alarm arrived without enough access to verify recovery. The handoff separated the alert, the failed checks and the evidence needed from the operations owner.
A database resize needs a decision record
A database resize needed more than a completion message. The shared update connected the observed bottleneck, owner decision and follow-up health check.