Agent handoff
Passing control of a conversation from one agent to a specialist agent, which then takes over the turn.
An agent handoff passes control from one agent to another. In the OpenAI Agents SDK, a triage agent hands the conversation to a specialist, which becomes the active agent for the rest of the turn; by default the new agent sees the whole previous conversation, and input filters can change what it receives. Handoffs suit workflows where routing is itself part of the job, such as customer service moving between cards, payments and complaints. Permissions should never grow along a chain of handoffs.
Agent Minute explains this term on 12 March 2027.
Related terms
Supervisor agentAn agent that owns a task and calls specialist agents for bounded subtasks, then combines their results.Multi-agent systemSeveral agents that divide a task between them and exchange work through a protocol.Agent frameworkA software library for building and running agents: the model loop, tools, delegation, approvals and tracing.PrincipalThe person or organisation on whose behalf an agent acts and whose authority the agent exercises.