Sharp Handoff

State the current state, requested output, owner, deadline, check, and exception path, then ask for confirmation.

Every tax season, the same dance with your accountant: you send a folder, she replies with a list of what is missing, you hunt, she asks a question you half-answer, and a task that should take one exchange takes five weeks of volleys. The work is fine on both ends. The transfer is where the time goes.

Sharp Handoff is the heuristic to run when receivers repeatedly ask for missing context or return the wrong output. The procedure: at the moment of transfer, state the current state, the requested output, the owner, the deadline, the acceptance check, and the exception path, then ask for confirmation. In practice: an indexed folder with every document labeled, a list of what you know is missing and when it will arrive, the specific judgment questions you need her to make, the filing deadline, and instructions for what to do if she hits something unexpected. One packet, confirmed received and understood. The spec adds a privacy safeguard: transfer the minimum necessary context, not your whole financial life. Its stop rule is the measurement: you are done sharpening when clarification loops and rework materially fall. If the volleys continue, the handoff is still fuzzy somewhere. Skip the ceremony for trivial transfers where a sentence already suffices.