VI · Multi-AgentEmerging★

Handoff

also known as Agent Handoff, Transfer, Routine Switch

Transfer the active conversation from one agent to another, carrying context across the switch.

This pattern helps complete certain larger patterns —

  • used-byCross-Domain Enterprise Agent Network★— Decompose enterprise agency into domain-specialised agents (finance, supply chain, HR, service), each grounded in its own system of record, and route artefacts between them through a standardised inter-agent protocol.
  • used-byGroup-Chat Manager★★— Place a dedicated manager between the participants of a multi-agent group chat that decides which participant speaks next on each turn.

Context

An agent system has several specialised agents — tier-1 support, billing, technical, sales — and one of them is mid-conversation with a user when it realises the request actually belongs to a different specialist. The user has already explained their situation, and forcing them to start over with a new agent would be a poor experience.

Problem

Without an explicit way to transfer the conversation, the team is stuck choosing between two bad options: keep the wrong agent on the line and let it bluff through territory it cannot really handle, or restart the conversation with a new agent and make the user repeat themselves. A naive transfer that just changes which agent is responding loses the context that has accumulated in the transcript. Worse, repeated transfers can ping-pong between agents that each think the other is the right one, with nothing detecting the loop.

Forces

  • Context transfer is lossy; what travels?
  • Handoff loops (A→B→A→B) are a real failure.
  • User experience must signal the change without disorienting.

Example

A customer-support bot answers tier-1 questions but keeps trying to bluff its way through billing disputes it cannot actually resolve. The team adds a handoff tool: when the conversation classifier detects a billing intent, the tier-1 agent calls handoff(target='billing-specialist', summary='customer disputes Sept invoice for $412, two prior tickets'), and the billing agent picks up with the summary plus the original transcript. Loop-detection refuses a re-handoff back to tier-1 within the same conversation. The customer no longer has to repeat themselves.

Diagram

Solution

Therefore:

Define a handoff tool. The current agent invokes it with target agent and a context summary. The target agent receives the summary plus the original conversation and continues from there. Loop detection prevents thrash.

What this pattern forbids. Handoffs happen only via the registered tool; out-of-band agent switches are forbidden.

The smaller patterns that complete this one —

  • generalisesConversation Handoff to Human★★— Transfer the entire conversation thread from agent to human operator, with state transfer and return primitive.
  • generalisesDecentralized Swarm Handoff★— Agents in a swarm decide handoffs to peers based on a shared protocol with no central coordinator; specifically about agent-initiated handoff protocols, not topology.

And the patterns that stand alongside it, or against it —

  • alternative-toSupervisor★★— Place a coordinating agent above a set of specialised agents and route work to them.
  • complementsRole Assignment★★— Assign each agent a named role (researcher, writer, critic, planner) with a role-specific prompt, tool palette, and acceptance criteria.
  • composes-withInter-Agent Communication★— Define a protocol for agents to exchange tasks, capabilities, and results across process or vendor boundaries.
  • composes-withTalker-Reasoner★— Split an interactive agent into a fast Talker for conversational responses and a slow Reasoner for deliberative planning and tool use, so the conversational loop never blocks on reasoning.

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References

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