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Retiring and Inheriting a Seat

Hand an AI agent's working seat to a fresh successor cleanly, with a packet and lineage ledger.

Source Download skill
Repository
mvschwarz/openrig
Stars
8,553
Licence
Apache-2.0
Files
2 files

What it does

This skill guides an AI agent through a planned handover when its own working session is nearing its context limit. Instead of letting the session degrade or get compacted, the agent writes a handover packet, records a row in an append-only lineage ledger, and helps prime a fresh successor agent to take over the same seat. It also covers the staged apprentice period, preserving the physical tmux seat at cutover, and consulting a retired predecessor.

Great for

  • Developers running long-lived multi-agent setups on the OpenRig platform who need planned succession between agent sessions
  • Teams that want auditable records of which agent held a seat and when
  • Operators who want a successor to start clean with explicit authority boundaries rather than inheriting a degraded context

Skip it if

  • Unplanned crashes or automatic compaction recovery, because the skill says those are handled by other skills (session-compaction-and-restore, claude-compaction-restore)
  • Setups without OpenRig, since the skill depends on rig commands and seat concepts from that platform
  • Fresh seats with no prior occupant, since the file says to use rig launch or agent-starters instead

Try asking

  • “I'm near my context limit and need to hand this seat to a fresh successor with a proper handover packet.”
  • “Write my lineage ledger row and tombstone for this tenure before I retire.”
  • “I'm inheriting this seat from a previous agent; help me understand what a handover means and what I should not over-inherit.”
  • “Start an apprentice handover so the successor can shadow me before the cutover decision.”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Retiring and Inheriting a SeatInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 2 original files, the Apache-2.0 licence and an attribution note.

    retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip retiring-and-inheriting-a-seat.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Read the sibling skills it references (seat-continuity-and-handover, orienting-to-an-inherited-seat) before a real handover, since this file defers mechanics to them.
  • Keep recurring duties explicit in both the packet and durable seat state, because the file notes they are the most often lost at a generation boundary.
  • Treat the apprentice period as a conversation, not a test, and do not let the successor act as the seat until the named owner confirms cutover.

What's inside

  • CHANGELOG.md
  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from mvschwarz/openrig under the Apache-2.0 licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.