Use case

Hand off a coding agent task to another machine

TL;DR

You need to leave your laptop, use a Windows-only tool or give the next step to another agent. A fresh agent won't remember your conversation. runpane handoff carries a written note and starts it in a new Pane from your exact commit.

Hand over the task, not just a command

workspace exec borrows the other machine's shell. Handoff starts a fresh coding agent there with your goal, verified progress and next steps. It doesn't transfer the original conversation or a running process. The receiver works in its own branch, safely isolated, and is instructed to push back to your branch and report to your panel.

Prepare the destination and the branch

Use the npm runpane CLI. The destination needs Pane running, the repository saved in Pane and a matching Git remote. The sender's branch must be pushed. Commit only the task's files and push when authorized. If you choose --push instead, it commits remaining changes as WIP and pushes without forcing; review those changes first.

Write the note, then preview the handoff

Run the template command from the source checkout. Fill in all nine sections before running the dry-run command: Goal, Current state, Done and verified, In progress, Next steps, Decisions and constraints, Open questions, How to verify, and Git state. Write None where a section doesn't apply. Keep the note outside the checkout and use a machine name from workspace list.

runpane handoff --template > ~/handoff.md
# Fill in every section of ~/handoff.md before continuing.
runpane workspace list
runpane handoff "codex on windows-pc" --note-file ~/handoff.md --dry-run

Check startup and know the limits

Remove --dry-run from the example to send the note and start the receiving agent. Stop changing the sender branch while the receiver works. Mac-to-Windows and Windows-to-Mac handoffs passed in manual checks after startup recovery; that doesn't promise unattended startup. If startup fails, check Pane and the receiving agent on the destination manually before retrying. Receiving WSL environments are unsupported. WSL to its own Windows host also has a pending daemon-routing fix.

Try it step by step

  1. Write a short note with the goal, decisions, actual check results and the first next action.
  2. Make the intended code revision reachable on the shared remote. Check for unrelated files before any push.
  3. Preview with --dry-run. Fix missing note sections or an unpushed branch. The preview doesn't check the destination's running Pane, saved repository or agent startup.
  4. Send without --dry-run, check that the receiver starts, and wait for its report. Review its changes and evidence.

Continue with the guides

The Workspaces and Handoff docs are being added alongside these guides. If a link is unavailable, use the released source below.

Sources

Corrections
If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and update the date at the top. Open an issue on GitHub
Sources

frequently asked questions

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By Parsa Khazaeepoul, co-founder of Pane. .