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agent handoff
also AI agent handoff or agent-to-agent handoff or handoff
Definition of agent handoff
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: the transfer of responsibility for an active task, conversation, or workflow stage from one AI agent to another, usually together with the context or state the receiving agent needs to continue
- The support agent initiated an agent handoff to a billing specialist and passed along the customer's conversation history.
- A clean agent handoff gave the writing agent the research, source links, and approval rules without making the user repeat the brief.
Two meanings, one word
In everyday English
A handoff is the act of transferring responsibility, control, or an item from one person to another.
In AI
The transfer of responsibility for an active task, conversation, or workflow stage from one AI agent to another, usually together with the context or state the receiving…
Origin & history
Handoff is an older term in work, communications, and customer service. OpenAI's Agents SDK helped establish agent handoff as a named multi-agent mechanism in 2025, using handoffs to transfer a conversation from one agent to a specialist. The phrase spread further as agent platforms described bots passing ownership of tasks and context to one another.
Test yourself
Which of these is the meaning of agent handoff?
Cite this entry
"Agent handoff." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/agent-handoff/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2026.