Handoffs are load-bearing.

The instinct in multi-agent design is to focus on agent capability. What can each agent do? How intelligent is it?

The harder question is: what happens when one agent hands off to another?

A handoff is not a transfer. It is a structured moment where context must be preserved, confirmation must be received, and failure must be handled. If the handoff protocol is weak, the orchestration collapses regardless of how capable each agent is.

Designing strong handoffs means defining what context is transferred, how the receiving agent confirms receipt, and what the fallback path is when the handoff fails.

What this changes in practice: before adding agents to a system, design the handoff protocol. That is where orchestration succeeds or fails.