Control of in-progress work passes between system and actor — in either direction — with enough context that the receiver can carry on where the giver stopped.
Forms
Recurring forms: escalation to the actor when the agent’s confidence or authority runs out, actor takeback mid-run, escalation from an automated channel to a human one, and the scheduled return of finished-but-unreviewed work.
Consequences
- control moves with its context attached — what was done, what remains, why the transfer — so the receiver continues the work instead of restarting it
- the seam is where accountability changes hands, and where it is most easily lost: after a transfer, each side can believe the other is watching
- transfers have a rate above which delegation stops paying for itself; a system that hands back constantly was never really delegated to
Resources & references
- AI UX Playground — Human Handoff, Escalation Thresholds
- aiuxdesign.guide — Graceful Handoff, Escalation Pathways
Appears in
Working on the same thing
- Passing work on, step 1 — Pass the work on with its context
Governing autonomy
- Handing work over, step 1 — Hand the work to someone else
- Handing work over, step 2 — Hand the work back to the agent
Related patterns
Serves
- Delegation — covers the handoff-and-takeback station of delegation's lifecycle
Enacts
- Agency — control is explicitly held, passed, and reclaimable rather than ambient
Related to
- Agent repair — repair keeps the current holder going; handoff gives up on the current holder without giving up on the work
- Abort — abort ends the work; handoff continues it in other hands
- Collaboration — in sustained co-work the transfer becomes routine turn-passing rather than an exception
- Notification — a handoff to an actor who isn't watching arrives as a notification
Preceded by
- Bounded autonomy — crossing a bound is a designed event rather than a failure: the work pauses and control returns to the actor for renewal, escalation, or takeback