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Use when ending a turn, finishing a slice, blocked on another agent's work, or escalating to a human — durable work handoff via queue items so the system keeps moving across compactions, missed messag
The skill file stays in the publisher's repository.
Paste the copied command in a terminal. It installs this SKILL.md into that agent.
npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill queue-handoff -a cursor -y
Use when ending a turn, finishing a slice, blocked on another agent's work, or escalating to a human — durable work handoff via queue items so the system keeps moving across compactions, missed messages, and interruptions. Covers the hot-potato terminal-turn-rule (active work ends by passing the ball, not by going idle), default-nudge semantics, and when `--no-nudge` is appropriate for intentional cold park or human gate.
Use when ending a turn, finishing a slice, blocked on another agent's work, or escalating to a human — durable work handoff via queue items so the system keeps moving across compactions, missed messages, and interruptions. Covers the hot-potato terminal-turn-rule (active work ends by passing the ball, not by going idle), default-nudge semantics, and when `--no-nudge` is appropriate for intentional cold park or human gate.
--no-nudgeDurable work handoff via queue items. Lets the system keep moving through compactions, missed messages, and interruptions by passing the ball forward instead of leaving work suspended in chat or in-flight without an owner.
closure_reason: blocked_on and the blocker qitem id.closure_reason: no-follow-on (terminal completion) or
canceled/denied as appropriate.Active work ends by passing the ball to a named next owner or to the human. The qitem state machine enforces this:
pending → in-progress → done requires closure_reason from one of:
handed_off_to — work continues at a different seat (target = new owner)blocked_on — parked pending another qitem (target = blocker qitem id)denied — receiver rejected the workcanceled — sender or receiver withdrewno-follow-on — terminal completion, nothing else neededescalation — kicked up to a higher tier (target = escalation target)Three of those (handed_off_to, blocked_on, escalation) additionally
require closure_target. The daemon enforces this at the domain layer;
every surface (CLI, MCP, future UI) inherits the same guarantee.
The drafted-park failure (draft ≠ throw). The rule is about the actual pass, not the
intention to pass. A turn that ends with a self-instruction typed into your own prompt but left
unsent — a drafted go-ahead, a next-atom note you never sent — has not handed off; it has
parked, and the seat sits idle for as long as nobody notices. Drafting the handoff feels like
doing it; it isn't. Your last act on a turn must be an EDIT or a SEND — a committed change, a
rig send, a rig queue handoff — never a drafted prompt line left in the buffer. If your
final output is an instruction addressed to yourself, you haven't ended the turn, you've stalled it.
The dispatcher's other half — supersession closes your own outbox. Ending your turn cleanly is only half the rule; the other half fires when you move the world. When a phase transition or a fold receipt supersedes work you dispatched, close those dispatches yourself — with a citation to the event that superseded them. Closure-on-supersession belongs to the dispatcher, never the receiver. Make it a habit: after every fold receipt / phase transition, run an outbox audit — which of my open dispatches did this just make moot? — and close them with the citation.
Why it must live with you: stale dispatch-debt is invisible to the dispatcher because it lands on someone else's queue — the cost is externalized, so no feedback loop ever fires to make you clean it up. The receiver inherits debt they did not create and must burn cycles verifying it before they can hold cleanly; a queue full of stale-pending makes check-before-holding — the discipline you most want cheap — expensive, and it degrades the idle-detector's signal (a real owner looks the same as a stale dispatch). Close it at the source: the moment your own transition mooted it.
And after you hand off, PULL — don't idle with a stocked queue. Handing the baton off ends the
sequential thread; it does not end your turn if your own queue still holds work. The circulation
pattern: finish → (1) hand the baton off so sequential work continues → (2) check your OWN queue and
pull the next item rather than going idle → (3) go truly idle only when your queue is exhausted,
then wait for the baton. An agent idling on top of a stocked queue is the single biggest utilization
leak (see orchestration-team → queue depth is the orchestrator's product). This is pull-not-push at
the seat level and needs no new machinery — the last act after a handoff is a PULL.
| Command | Nudges by default? | When to use |
|---|---|---|
rig queue create | yes | New qitem created from scratch |
rig queue handoff | yes | Transactional close-as-handed-off + create-new |
rig queue handoff-and-complete | yes | Atomic close + create-new; default nudge wakes the new owner |
Footgun: --no-nudge accidentally added to a live-loop handoff.
The shipped 0.3.1 CLI nudges by default on every queue write surface
(rig queue create, rig queue handoff, AND rig queue handoff-and-complete).
The only suppression flag is --no-nudge — appropriate for intentional
cold park, human-gate signal, or a deliberate poll-driven workflow, but
NOT for live-loop handoffs where motion matters.
Rule: in a live loop, omit --no-nudge and trust the default.
--no-nudge is the opt-out, not the opt-in. If you find yourself
reaching for --notify, stop — that flag does not exist on the
shipped 0.3.1 CLI; you may be following a stale instruction that
inverted the default-nudge polarity.
The qitem body is durable DATA the daemon stores and replays on every
rig queue show <id> / --json read. Keep it small and parse-safe — a
bloated or malformed body costs every future reader, not just the
recipient.
rig ps/--nodes
dumps, big JSON blobs, full proof output, diffs, or transcript chunks
into a qitem body. Link the artifact PATH (e.g.
missions/<m>/<slice>/proof.md) or summarize in prose, then point
at the file for the detail. A pasted dump makes rig queue show <id> --full --json large. Compact defaults limit a preview, but the stored body
still costs readers who need full detail. Keep evidence in its durable artifact.--body-file, not inline --body.
For anything beyond a short line, write the body to a file and pass
--body-file <path> (or - for stdin). Inline --body with shell
metacharacters is fragile.--body-file, or drop the backticks and write
the command in plain text.Heuristic: if the thing you want to include is more than a few lines or
contains shell metacharacters (backticks, $, quotes, newlines-with-pipes),
it belongs in a file you LINK, not in the body you paste.
The current rig queue show returns a bounded body preview by default;
--full returns the complete body and chain fields. Preview truncation does
not truncate the stored work. Check bodyTruncated and bodyBytes, then request
full content when needed; keep large supporting evidence in linked artifacts.
--no-nudge inside a live loop, intending suppression of attention but breaking immediate motion. --no-nudge is for intentional cold park / human gate, not for routine live-loop handoffs. The opposite footgun — adding a --notify flag that does not exist on the shipped 0.3.1 CLI — comes from following stale instructions; the default already nudges.--body-file; no raw backticks inline.Every qitem carries:
handed_off_to — destination session (qualified pod-member@rig form)handed_off_from — predecessor qitem id (the source session is source_session)state — one of: pending | in-progress | done | blocked | failed | denied | canceled | handed-offclosure_reason + closure_target — set on terminal closure per hot-potato rule(0.5.0) --body-context <ref> — context riding the handoff. rig queue create … --body-context <ref> attaches a composed context pack to the qitem. The snapshot rule: the qitem stores the resolved content in its body plus the ref for provenance — the handoff carries what was actually sent, and a later edit to the library never silently rewrites a past handoff's history. (The rig context noun composes the ref; the queue delivers it — the noun has no send.) See openrig-user → "Context packs and paced delivery."
The fields are auditable on the daemon-backed rig queue surface. Watchdog
policies and workflow runtime project new owners off these fields.
If a daemon-backed coordination command fails, debug the command/runtime/schema edge directly — don't fall back to stale pre-upgrade assumptions.