handoff-fanout 1.3.0

Project-agnostic auto-handoff & parallel fan-out for AI coding sessions (Claude Code / Cursor / Aider). 5-layer defense against orphan tasks, git index hijack, and stale handoffs.

handoff-fanout

Project-agnostic auto-handoff & parallel fan-out for AI coding sessions. 5-layer defense against orphan tasks, git index hijack, and stale handoffs.

中文文档 / Chinese README

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The problem

You're running an AI coding agent (Claude Code / Cursor / Aider) across multiple IDE tabs, often across multiple projects, on a single workstation. Four pain points show up:

#	Symptom	Root cause
1	A tab finishes its task; the next task never spawns.	No standard handoff protocol — every project re-invents an ad-hoc baton.
2	git commit from Tab B silently sweeps in Tab A's git add.	.git/index is a repo-shared file. Without a lock, add → commit is not atomic.
3	A session crashes mid-task; downstream sessions inherit a half-baked baseline.	No durable "last good baseline" record + no orphan detector.
4	Want to split one task into N parallel sub-tasks but can't coordinate the merge.	No fan-out/fan-in primitives that respect file ownership.

handoff-fanout is a small, zero-runtime-dependency Python toolkit that solves all four. It was extracted from a year-old production ERP project where these failures cost real hours, and it's been hardened by three documented commit-hijack incidents (now blocked at four independent layers).

What you get

• handoff dump — atomically write a queue file describing the next task; the IDE auto-spawn helper picks it up and launches a new tab.
• handoff dump --open-batch — fan-out: split one task into N sub-tasks, each with strict file_ownership boundaries; a fan-in tab consolidates results.
• handoff watchdog — fail-safe scanner: triggers fan-in when the last sub-task finishes; flags orphan tabs (e.g. a tab spawned by launchd but whose batch dir got rm-ed under it).
• handoff safe-commit — wraps git commit with cross-process flock + HANDOFF_EXPECTED_FILES invariant + pre-commit hook integration. No more hijack.
• handoff heartbeat — fan-in tab heartbeat daemon, Amdahl-speedup metrics, and runtime calibration so your next batch's split decision is data-driven.
• handoff git-guard — a PATH-injected git wrapper that physically blocks commit/push/rebase/cherry-pick/reset/revert/tag/am/format-patch/merge inside sub-task tabs. The fan-in tab is the only committer.

5-layer defense (the headline)

                ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                │  Layer 1 — git-guard (PATH-injected git wrapper) │
                │  Sub-task tabs literally cannot run `git commit`.│
                └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                       │
                                       ▼
              ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
              │  Layer 2 — pre-commit hook (HANDOFF_EXPECTED_FILES)│
              │  Rejects commits whose staged set ≠ expected set.  │
              └────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                       │
                                       ▼
          ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
          │  Layer 3 — safe-commit wrapper (flock + invariant)      │
          │  Cross-process lock on ~/.handoff/git-commit.lock.      │
          │  Verifies `git diff --cached --name-only` ⊆ expected.   │
          └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                       │
                                       ▼
       ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │  Layer 4 — atomic file primitives (queue / batch writes)   │
       │  atomic_create / write_with_fsync / acquire_dir_lock.      │
       │  No half-written queue files. No torn batch manifests.     │
       └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                       │
                                       ▼
      ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
      │  Layer 5 — watchdog (orphan / stale / heartbeat scan)        │
      │  Runs from launchd/cron. Re-triggers fan-in if last-one-out  │
      │  silently dies. Marks orphan sub-task tabs BLOCKED.          │
      └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Each layer is independent. Defeating one is not enough — for a hijack to land, all four commit-path layers (1-4) must fail simultaneously.

Quickstart

pip install handoff-fanout

# Idempotent install: symlinks bin/ → ~/.local/bin, generates ~/.handoff/config.json,
# installs git hooks, optionally installs launchd plist (macOS).
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rssprivacy-commits/handoff-fanout/main/install/install.sh | bash

# Dump the next task from your current project repo:
cd ~/Projects/my-repo
handoff dump \
    --task fix-bug-123 \
    --next "Fix the off-by-one in the discount calculation." \
    --status active \
    --tests "tests/test_discount.py"

A new file appears at ~/.handoff/my-repo/queue/fix-bug-123.md, the launchd watcher picks it up within one second, and a fresh IDE tab opens already pointed at your repo with that handoff loaded.

How it compares

	handoff-fanout	Celery	Argo Workflows	Temporal
Target environment	One workstation, multiple IDE tabs	Distributed service, many workers	Kubernetes cluster	Distributed service
Coordination unit	An AI coding tab	A Python function	A pod	A workflow function
State store	Plain files under ~/.handoff/	Redis / RabbitMQ broker + result backend	etcd + K8s objects	Cassandra / MySQL + Temporal server
External dependencies	None (zero-dep Python)	Broker + (often) Redis result backend	Full K8s cluster	Temporal server + DB
Failure model	Atomic file writes + file locks + watchdog	Broker durability + ack semantics	K8s controller reconciliation	Event-sourced durable execution
Cross-process commit safety	First-class (4 layers)	Out of scope	Out of scope	Out of scope
Fan-out / fan-in	Yes, with file-ownership boundaries	Yes (canvas: group/chord/chain)	Yes (DAG)	Yes (child workflows)
Setup time	pip install + install.sh	Hours (broker, workers, monitoring)	Days (cluster + manifests)	Hours (server + workers)
Designed for	AI coding-session orchestration	Background-job queues	CI/CD & ML pipelines	Long-running business workflows

The right way to read this: handoff-fanout is not a competitor to Celery / Argo / Temporal — it occupies the corner of the design space those tools deliberately don't enter (one workstation, IDE-tab granularity, no broker, git-aware). If you need durable distributed workflow execution, pick one of those instead.

Documentation

• docs/PROTOCOL.md — queue file format, state machine, atomicity guarantees.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — full 5-layer defense walk-through with sequence diagrams.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — dev setup, test layout, PR conventions.
• CHANGELOG.md — version history & extraction roadmap.

Status

v0.1.0 — public extraction in progress. Source modules ported. Bilingual docs, installer, and CI matrix are part of the v1.0.0 milestone (this branch). The original implementation has been in daily production use since 2024-Q2 across an ERP project with 70+ DB tables and 250+ tests.

Once v1.0.0 ships, the ERP repo will migrate to a thin shim that delegates to this package.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.