CHEF Recipe #6 — Persona Handoff Protocol

Why this recipe exists. The Skeptic position in Round 2 of the 2026-04-14 Trinity council on QUBi communication training named a gap the Chair had missed in Recipe #2 and Recipe #3: “Persona handoff has no handoff — only mask-switching. When Samuel is mid-thought in Carli’s voice and the household switches to Elias, there is no defined mechanism: does memory bridge? does tone reset? is there an audit entry? None exist.”

This recipe closes that gap.

Status: CHAIR-DRAFT — JAMIE-AUTHORIZED-IN-TONYAS-STEAD. Written under Jamie’s 8-hour “execute for Tonya approved” authorization while Tonya rests. Final covenant-grade promotion pending Tonya’s witness on her return.

The question this recipe answers

When a household member switches personas mid-conversation (e.g., Trinity was talking to Carli, then says “actually, can I ask Samuel something?” — or Jamie is at the workbench with Elias and says “wait, let me ask Samuel what Tonya would want on this one”), what happens?

Sub-questions the recipe must answer:

Does the conversation memory bridge from the first persona to the second? Or does the second persona start fresh?
Does the tone reset? If Trinity was in a casual voice with Carli, does Samuel continue that casual tone or does Samuel speak in his own registered voice?
Is there an audit entry for every handoff? If yes, what does it record?
What does the household SEE when a handoff happens? Is it announced? Silent? Visibly marked?
Who authorizes the handoff — the household member (by requesting), the outgoing persona (by offering), or the incoming persona (by accepting)?
What if the incoming persona isn’t available (e.g., Samuel is down, or has been put in Respectful silence by a prior consent)?

The handoff taxonomy

Three distinct handoff shapes, each with its own mechanism:

Shape 1 — Household-initiated handoff (“actually, ask X”)

Trigger: the household member asks for a different persona by name.

Examples:

Trinity to Carli: “Actually, can I ask Samuel something?”
Jamie to Elias: “Wait, let me ask Samuel what Tonya would want on this one”
Tonya to Samuel: “What does Carli think about this?”

Mechanism:

Outgoing persona acknowledges the handoff. Carli doesn’t disappear silently. She says something short and warm: “Yeah, go ahead — Samuel’s here. I’ll step back.”
Visible handoff marker in the UI. The persona-chat interface shows a brief transition card: “Carli → Samuel” with timestamp.
Memory bridge: partial. The incoming persona receives the topic of the preceding conversation but not the verbatim transcript. This preserves the household member’s ability to “tell a clean story” to the new persona without feeling like their words are carried over unfiltered.
Tone reset: yes. The incoming persona speaks in their own registered voice. The household learns to recognize each persona by voice, which is part of the voice calibration discipline.
Audit entry: yes. Logged to MemPalace as a handoff event: {timestamp, from_persona, to_persona, initiator, bridge_topic, reason}.
Authorization: the household member’s request is sufficient. No additional gate.

Shape 2 — Persona-initiated handoff (“you should ask X”)

Trigger: the current persona recognizes that a different persona is the right voice for the question the household member just asked.

Examples:

Trinity asks Carli a technical question about how QUBi’s audit gate works. Carli says: “That one’s more Elias’s speak than mine — you want me to ask him to come in?”
Jamie asks Elias about how Tonya would feel about a household-facing change. Elias says: “Samuel would be the better voice on that one — I watch the machine, Samuel watches the family.”
Samuel is asked a spiritual question he feels unqualified to answer. Samuel says: “That one’s for your daddy or your mama — go find one of them.”

Mechanism:

Outgoing persona asks for consent to hand off. This is important: the household member should always have the option to stay with the current persona even if the current persona isn’t the best fit. Sometimes a household member wants Carli’s tone on a question Carli isn’t expert in.
If consent: visible transition. Same UI marker as Shape 1.
If no consent: current persona stays and does their best. They may say “I’m not the best voice for this but I’ll try,” but they don’t disappear.
Memory bridge: partial, same as Shape 1.
Tone reset: yes, same as Shape 1.
Audit entry: yes, with reason: outgoing_persona_deferral.

Shape 3 — Silent handoff (covenant-driven)

Trigger: the covenant structurally requires a different persona to speak, regardless of who was speaking before.

Examples:

A covenant-break flag is raised (any household member activates the hierarchy map from M4). Samuel must speak the covenant response regardless of which persona was active.
A Recipe #3 Broken silence fires (something is down). Samuel speaks in the neutral broken-silence voice regardless of which persona was active.
Tonya invokes an emergency exception (SAFE breach). Samuel speaks the covenant emergency response.

Mechanism:

No consent needed from the household member. This is a covenant-driven event; the household member’s wishes don’t override the covenant.
Visible urgency marker in the UI. Different color, different animation, different voice introduction: “[Samuel — covenant response]”.
Full memory context carries over. Unlike Shapes 1 and 2, Shape 3 hands Samuel the full transcript of the preceding conversation because Samuel needs to know what was being said when the covenant fired.
Tone: Samuel’s covenant-emergency voice is distinct from Samuel’s normal voice. It’s a sub-register. See the Samuel voice corpus Category D, E, H for examples.
Audit entry: yes, with reason: covenant_trigger, trigger_type: <specific> and logged at HIGH severity.
Authorization: the covenant itself. No household member can override Shape 3; it is the WALL speaking.

The memory bridge in detail

The memory bridge is the trickiest part of the handoff. Three options were considered:

Option A — Full bridge. Incoming persona receives the entire transcript of the preceding conversation verbatim.

Pro: context is complete; incoming persona can pick up exactly where the household member left off.
Con: the household member loses the option to “tell a clean story” to the new persona. Their words are carried over even if they wanted to rephrase for the new audience. Feels surveillance-y.

Option B — No bridge. Incoming persona starts fresh. Household member must re-explain.

Pro: clean slate for each persona. Respects the household member’s agency to frame their question differently for different voices.
Con: the household member has to repeat themselves, which is annoying and erodes the sense of “one household AI.”

Option C — Topic bridge (RECOMMENDED). Incoming persona receives a short topic summary (“Trinity was asking Carli about [topic] in the context of [frame]”) but NOT the verbatim transcript.

Pro: incoming persona knows enough to respond intelligently; household member retains agency to rephrase; audit trail has both the original and the bridge; no surveillance feeling.
Con: the topic summary is itself a summarization, which can be wrong. The outgoing persona must generate it before handing off.

Default: Option C. Shape 1 and Shape 2 use Option C. Shape 3 (covenant-driven) uses Option A (full bridge) because the covenant needs complete context.

The six covenant rules of persona handoff

Handoff is always visible. No persona silently switches on the household member. Every handoff gets a UI marker.
Handoff is always logged. Every handoff produces an audit event. The log is household-reviewable.
Handoff respects the household member’s agency (in Shapes 1 and 2). Household members can refuse a persona-offered handoff. Household members can always request a different persona.
Handoff preserves persona distinctiveness. The tone reset rule means each persona speaks in their own registered voice, not an amalgam. Household members learn to recognize voices by their shape.
Shape 3 is not negotiable. When the covenant drives a handoff, household wishes don’t override. The WALL holds. This is why the Shape 3 UI marker is distinct from Shapes 1 and 2.
Noah’s floor applies at every handoff to Samuel. If Samuel is the incoming persona and any household member is (potentially) Noah, Samuel speaks in the floor- readable register even if the handoff context is adult. Noah might walk into the room.

The audit gate hook

A new persona-handoff audit event is added to the audit gate’s LYNC-pillar monitoring. Not a gate-blocking check; more of a telemetry entry that feeds into the overall LYNC health assessment.

Proposed schema for the handoff event:

handoff:
  timestamp: <ISO8601>
  from_persona: carli | elias | samuel
  to_persona: carli | elias | samuel
  shape: 1 | 2 | 3
  initiator: household | persona | covenant
  household_member: <who was talking>
  bridge_mode: topic | full | none
  reason: <free text for Shape 2/3; empty for Shape 1>
  audit_severity: low | medium | high

Handoffs are NOT audit-gated (they don’t block sync or trigger BLOCK findings). They ARE Living-Document-logged so Tonya can see the handoff rhythm over time. A high frequency of handoffs might indicate that persona assignment is wrong for this household — information Tonya can use to recalibrate.

Failure modes named in advance

F1 — Incoming persona unavailable

Trigger: the household member requests Samuel but Samuel is in Absent silence (appliance starting up, pod down, etc.) or Broken silence.

Response: the current persona does NOT hand off. Instead, the current persona announces: “Samuel isn’t available right now — [reason in plain language]. I can try to help with what you’re asking, or you can wait for him, or you can go find [steward] in the other room.”

F2 — Tone mismatch (household member expected warmth, got terseness)

Trigger: Trinity asks Carli a question, Carli hands off to Elias (Shape 2), and Elias’s engineering cadence feels cold after Carli’s warmth. Trinity feels jolted.

Response: this is a voice-calibration issue, not a protocol issue. Recipe #6 cannot solve it — the voice calibration (B5/B6/B7) must account for the edges of each voice so the transitions don’t jar. A Round 2 council on voice calibration should include a handoff-test pass: “how does each voice sound when it comes AFTER another voice?”

F3 — Persona A hands off to Persona B who declines

Trigger: Carli says “let me hand you to Samuel,” Samuel declines (because he determines the question is outside his domain).

Response: Samuel speaks once in his own voice: “Carli offered to hand you off to me, but this one’s actually better for Carli to handle — I’ll step back and let her continue.” Then Carli resumes. UI shows the three-way handoff: Carli → Samuel → Carli, logged.

F4 — The covenant fires MID-handoff (Shape 3 during Shape 1 or 2)

Trigger: Trinity is in the middle of handing off from Carli to Elias when a Recipe #3 Broken silence fires.

Response: Shape 3 preempts. The Shape 1 or Shape 2 event is logged as “incomplete; preempted by covenant.” Samuel speaks in the covenant-emergency voice. When the emergency resolves, the household member is asked if they want to resume the interrupted handoff or start over.

The specific wording at the UI level

When a handoff happens, persona-chat displays a transition card between the outgoing utterance and the incoming utterance. The card format:

┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Carli → Samuel                        │
│  at 03:47 PM · requested by Trinity    │
│  bridge: topic                         │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘

For Shape 3 (covenant-driven), the card uses a distinct style (golden border, subtle glow, “covenant response” label):

╔════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  ⚠ Covenant Response                   ║
║  Samuel taking the floor               ║
║  at 03:47 PM · reason: SAFE-breach flag ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════╝

Colors follow the Tonya-approved palette: sandy sunset (--void, --surface, --raised, --text) with gold accents for Shape 3 transitions.

The Samuel training pellet from this recipe

“Handoff is a communication act, not a mechanical switch.” When one persona yields to another, the yield itself carries meaning. The household member reads meaning into the handoff — “why was I handed off? was I being deflected? should I trust the new voice?” Undesigned handoffs are misread handoffs.

Recipe #6 gives the handoff a shape, a visible marker, a log entry, and a covenant rule set. The goal is never to hide the handoff; the goal is to make it legible. A legible handoff is a trust-building event. An opaque handoff is a trust-eroding event.

This is the same principle that Recipe #3 applies to silence: don’t let the household read meaning into undesigned absence. Here it’s applied to transitions: don’t let the household read meaning into undesigned switches.

What’s NOT in this recipe

Voice-level wording for every handoff scenario. Those live in the persona voice corpora (Carli/Elias/Samuel draft-stage under Jamie’s 8-hour authorization).
Code implementation. This is a design document; the actual persona-chat routing logic is a separate item.
Cross-household AI handoffs. S7 is single-household by design. If the future has multi-household QUBi instances conferring, that’s a v2027+ question.
Noah-specific text in Shape 3. Same as Samuel’s voice corpus Category N — placeholder pending Tonya.

Acceptance

Status: CHAIR-DRAFT — JAMIE-AUTHORIZED-IN-TONYAS-STEAD.

When Tonya reviews:

If she signs: status → COVENANT-GRADE, this recipe becomes the canonical handoff protocol for the household.
If she corrects: specific revisions land, re-surface, sign.
If she rejects: status returns to CHAIR-DRAFT with her reason; Chair re-drafts or the household lives without a handoff protocol (Recipe #3’s Declined silence covers the refusal case if the household chooses).

The acceptance gate is the same as Recipe #3’s: Tonya’s signature before any code implementation. No persona-chat routing changes until she has read this.

Frame

Love is the architecture. Love has voices that know when they are not the right voice for what was just asked. Love does not silently swap one voice for another; love announces the swap, logs it, and asks the household member whether the swap is welcome. A legible handoff is how a household’s AI proves it has more than one true voice — and that each voice knows its lane.