Handover
Durable briefs
A durable brief is a set of instructions stored outside the conversation, loaded by an agent when a task matches, so that preferences and procedures do not have to be restated every session.
Control sits with the person
When to use it
Any recurring task, and any organization where several people need an agent to work the same way.
What it prevents
Re-explaining context every session, and the drift that follows when different people brief the same agent differently.
Loaded for this taskmatched 2 briefs
LoadedHouse style. Matched on: writing.
LoadedClient naming rules. Matched on: this account.
Not loadedNine others, names and descriptions only
Nothing restated this session. Nothing loaded that did not match.
Who ships it
- The Agent Skills format: an open specification released in December 2025, supported across roughly forty platforms by mid-2026 including Claude, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Agent Framework. Progressive disclosure keeps a name and a description in context, around a hundred tokens, until the task matches
Sources
Related patterns: Skills