# Stale-NEXT rule

Band: emerging — Real practice, thin evidence. Mostly vendor-stated or reported rather than measured.
Group: Handing off
Implemented by: https://clickai.dev/skills/handoff

A handoff points at the tracker query and never enumerates work items. A listed item number goes stale the moment another session claims it, and a session starting from that list collides with the claimer. The corollary is the part people skip: reading a handoff never authorises starting an item — the claim runs first. It is the clearest example on this page of why you defer to a live graph instead of snapshotting one.

## See also

- [Handoff artifact](https://clickai.dev/legend/handoff-artifact)
- [Claim (read-before-write)](https://clickai.dev/legend/claim)
- [Frontier](https://clickai.dev/legend/frontier)

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Full legend: https://clickai.dev/legend.md