Queue Handoff

Durable 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.

Use this when

• Ending a turn on substantive work. Active work should end by passing the ball to an owner or to the human, never by going idle with the rig appearing dormant.
• Finishing a slice that has a clear next step. Default-nudge: receiver gets a wake-ping plus the durable queue item.
• Blocked on another agent's work. Use rig queue block <id> --on <child> (or rig queue update <id> --state blocked --blocked-on <child>). The item stays active and returns to pending when its blocker completes. Waiting on something outside the queue, such as CI or a long job? Park the row: rig queue block <id> --on external:<what> --wake-after <duration> --continuation "<what resumes>". It stays yours and reads parked, not stalled, and the timer wakes you.
• Escalating to the human. Make the escalation a durable attention item, not just a chat message.

Don't use this when

• The work is genuinely complete and there's no follow-on owner. Use closure_reason: no-follow-on (terminal completion) or canceled/denied as appropriate.
• The handoff would be too small and turn work into bureaucracy. Bundle the work into a coherent slice instead of decomposing every step.
• The handoff would be too broad and lose ownership/proof/closure criteria. Shape the qitem so the receiver knows the expected next action and closure evidence.

The hot-potato terminal-turn-rule

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: