A handoff note the next AI session can stand on

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Made by Lizvo · AI work method · Short read · Published October 31, 2026

A new AI conversation does not remember the previous one. Memory features help with some things, but they don’t reliably hold what you decided, what is finished and what is not. The simplest remedy is a short note you write at the end of a session and paste at the start of the next.

What goes in the note

1. The goal, in one sentence

What this piece of work is for. It stops the next session from solving a neighboring problem.

2. Where things stand

What is finished and checked, what is claimed but unchecked, and what is not started. Keep those three apart.

3. Decisions made, and why

One line each. The reason matters more than the decision: without it, the next session will reopen the question.

4. What not to redo

Things that are finished, or ideas already tried and dropped.

5. Open questions

What you don’t know yet, and who or what could answer it.

6. Where the files are

Names and locations of the documents the next session needs.

7. The very next step

One action, so the session has somewhere to begin.

How to use it

Paste the note at the start of the next conversation and ask the AI to say it back in its own words before it does anything. Differences between what you meant and what it says back are cheap to fix at that point, and expensive later.

At the end of that session, update the note rather than starting a new one. A note that is rewritten each time stays short, and the oldest decisions don’t get lost under the newest.

What to leave out

Whole transcripts, long background, and anything you wouldn’t want pasted into another tool. The note is a summary you control, not an archive.

This won’t make the next session perfect, but it does mean you are correcting a short note instead of re-explaining a project.

— Lizvo

General information only, not professional advice. See the disclaimers.