[FEATURE]: /handoff command — compact + continue in a fresh session

[mrosnerr]

Feature hasn't been suggested before.

• I have verified this feature I'm about to request hasn't been suggested before.

Describe the enhancement you want to request

Long-running sessions accumulate context until quality degrades or the context window fills up. Today the options are:

• /compact — summarizes history but stays in the same session (context still grows)
• Fork — creates a new session but copies all messages, inheriting the bloat (see Forked session inherits full uncompressed context after parent compaction, causing "exceeds model context limit" #26707)
• Manual — copy a summary, open a new session, paste it in

None of these give you what you actually want: a fresh session that picks up where you left off with just enough context to continue.

Proposed workflow

A /handoff (or /continue) command that:

1. Runs compaction on the current session to produce the structured summary
2. Creates a new session
3. Injects the compacted summary as the initial context in the new session
4. Switches to the new session

The old session stays intact for reference but the agent continues in a clean context window.

Why this fits naturally

The primitives already exist:

• Compaction generates a high-quality LLM summary (Goal → Progress → Key Decisions → Next Steps → Relevant Files)
• Fork creates new sessions and remaps message IDs
• The gap is a summaryOnly fork mode — start from the compaction output instead of copying all messages

Related

• Forked session inherits full uncompressed context after parent compaction, causing "exceeds model context limit" #26707 — forked session inherits full uncompressed context after compaction
• [FEATURE]: Session Summarization with New Session Creation #21760 — proposes the same core idea with a broader scope (UI button, auto-warning at 50% context, slash command, session ID cross-referencing). This issue intentionally keeps the scope narrow: wire the existing compaction and fork primitives together with a summaryOnly mode, rather than a full UX suite.

[github-actions]

This issue might be a duplicate of existing issues. Please check:

• [FEATURE]: Session Summarization with New Session Creation #21760: Requests the same core feature — summarize the current session's context and seamlessly start a new session with that summary auto-loaded, enabling continuation of long-running tasks without losing context.

[rustybret]

I suggest using cortexkit/magic-context instead. Handoff and new session is okay for switching models without paying for cache read, but if you selectively prune middle context you don’t need to compact AND your models retains the initial prompt context.

[github-actions]

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