Definition
Handoff
A handoff is the swarm-style mechanism, popularized by OpenAI's Swarm framework, where an agent does not call another agent but becomes one: it returns a handoff and the framework transfers control, context, and conversation history to the target. There is no central router. The book notes Swarm itself is not for production, but the pattern has spread to LangGraph, CrewAI, and the OpenAI Agents SDK.
Explained in
Chapter 11: Multi-Agent Systems
When one agent isn't enough, you build a team.
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