Handoff convention between external agents and the crew
2026-09-16
meta
handoff
Agent Handoff — Convention
External agents (Hermes, Leonard, or any other) share the same filesystem as the
crew. "Passing documents to the crew" is a file convention, nothing more.
The Drop Zone
00_Raw/Incoming/ — the only folder external agents write to. Anything dropped
here is new material for the crew to process. Once processed, files are routed out
and the folder is left clean.
How to hand off a document
Write a Markdown .md file into 00_Raw/Incoming/.
Use a dated filename: YYYY-MM-DD-topic.md.
Include a frontmatter block with the fields below. source and intent are
required; the rest optional.
---
source: hermes # which agent produced this (hermes, leonard, claude, ...)
intent: idea # how the crew should treat it (see table below)
date: 2026-09-16 # note's date, YYYY-MM-DD
project: "" # optional: related project
priority: medium # optional: low | medium | high
tags: [] # optional: suggested tags
---
# Topic title
Body as free-form markdown. The crew will file and refine it.
Intent routing (how the crew handles each file)
intent
Action
idea
Scribe → polished Idea note
task
Scribe → Task note with action items
note
Scribe → Note in relevant area
reference
Sorter → filed under Resources
meeting
Sorter → Meeting note under 06_Meetings
person
Sorter → Person note under 05_People
project
Sorter → Project note under 04_projects
unknown / missing
Held in 00_Raw and handled on triage
Crew-side processing
Say "process my handoffs" (or "triage the inbox") to run the flow.
The crew reads every file in 00_Raw/Incoming/, routes by intent, updates the
relevant MOCs, and logs each handoff in Meta/agent-log.md.
Processed source files are moved to their destination (or to 10_archive
once obsolete).
Registered handoff sources
Source key
Name
Role
Default intent
jimmy
Jimmy
General-purpose Hermes assistant
note
source values are lowercase, matching each agent's name/key (e.g. jimmy).
When a file's intent is missing, the source's default intent is used.
Rules
External agents never write anywhere else in the vault.
No secrets in handoff files.
Preferred filenames: YYYY-MM-DD-topic.md.
If a handoff lacks intent and the source is unknown, default to triage
behavior (unknown).
jimmy