Handoff (Triage / Escalation)

What Problem It Solves

Sometimes the current agent is the wrong “owner”:

• wrong expertise
• wrong tool access
• wrong risk profile

Handoff makes escalation explicit: handoff to X with a summary.

Core Flow

flowchart TD
  U["Task"] --> R["Router / Triage"]
  R -->|handle| A0["Current agent answers"]
  R -->|handoff + summary| A1["Specialist agent"]
  A1 --> O["Answer"]
  A0 --> O

Evolution Path

• A routing pattern between agents (works well with manager-worker)
• Often combined with: governance (different agents have different permissions)

Repo Reference

• Code: src/agent_patterns_lab/patterns/handoff.py
• Example: examples/64_handoff.py
• Tests: tests/test_handoff_pattern.py