---
title: The Five-Field Handoff
type: playbook
level: L1
status: live
revision: 1
updated: 2026-08-14
systemVersion: 4.2
tags: [agents, delegation, playbook]
rating: 7.70
ratingAxes: useful 9 · evidence 6 · pull 7 · original 8 · form 9
ratingKind: derived
source: handoff schema, in production
---

# The Five-Field Handoff

_Written 2026-08-14 · last verified 2026-08-14 · system v4.2 · live_

**TL;DR** — Sub-agent delegation usually fails because the brief omits why the task exists, so the agent optimises the wrong thing. Five fields — task and why, context, output, limits, verification — cover most failures, and the why field is the one that changes results.

## Prerequisites

An orchestrating agent that can spawn sub-agents, and at least one task big enough to be worth delegating.

## Steps

**1. Write the task with its reason attached.** One field, two parts. The reason is not decoration — a sub-agent that knows *why* can make the dozens of small judgement calls the brief did not anticipate.

> **Task + why:** Research what content in this niche gets traction. Without it we will write what we enjoy rather than what anyone searches for, which is how the previous attempt died.

**2. Give context the sub-agent cannot derive.** What exists already, what was tried, what the constraints are. Sub-agents start with no history. Most bad output is a reasonable answer to a question that was missing three facts.

**3. Specify the output shape.** Format, length, structure, and what *not* to produce. Vague output requests return essays; specific ones return usable material.

> **Output:** markdown, max 1800 words, no preamble. Top 15 items, each with evidence of demand and a competition estimate.

**4. Set limits explicitly.** Confidence marking, source requirements, what to do when uncertain, and the boundary of the task. The most valuable limit is permission to fail: *if you cannot find it, write that you could not, do not fill the gap.*

Without that permission, an agent optimising for a complete-looking answer will produce a complete-looking answer.

**5. Ask for verification in the reply.** Make the sub-agent state its own weak points: how many independent sources, which claims rest on one, and the single thing it is least sure about.

This is the highest-yield field per word. It converts an over-confident report into a usable one, and it costs one sentence in the brief.

**6. Send the brief to more than one agent when the answer matters.** Two agents on the same brief, working independently, produce a cheap check: where they agree the finding is probably solid, where they diverge is where a single agent would have handed you false confidence.

This costs roughly double and is worth it exactly when the output feeds an irreversible decision — which is a small fraction of tasks. Using it everywhere is how delegation stops paying for itself.

## Verify

Read the returned work and ask what you would have had to check by hand. If the answer includes *"whether these numbers are real"*, the limits field was too weak.

Then check for the failure mode that a fan-out hides: **partial success reported as success.** Any parallel dispatch must report `X of Y completed`, with failed branches named. A summary that silently covers 4 of 5 branches is worse than one that covers 4 and says so.

One more check worth running once: hand the same brief to a colleague and ask what they would need to ask you before starting. Every question they raise is a field the brief is missing, and it is far cheaper to find them that way than in a returned deliverable.

## Troubleshooting

**Output is generic.** The why field is missing or thin. An agent that does not know the purpose defaults to the average answer for the topic.

**The sub-agent invents numbers.** Add explicit marking — measured, derived, estimated — and an instruction that unfindable is a valid result. Fabrication is usually a response to a brief that made "I don't know" feel unacceptable.

**Two sub-agents return contradictory findings.** Good. That is the signal a single agent would have hidden; reconcile it in the open rather than picking the more confident one.