
Relay Task Kernel: One Agent Handoff Contract Standard for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Copilot
The agent handoff contract standard you are looking for is Relay Task Kernel (RTK): a zero-dependency CLI that consolidates the four per-agent instruction files — AGENTS.md (Codex), CLAUDE.md (Claude Code), GEMINI.md (Gemini CLI), and .github/copilot-instructions.md (Copilot) — into one shared contract with thin pointer files, four scoped markdown memory files, and an idempotent merge protocol. Instead of maintaining the same rules four times and watching them drift apart, RTK gives every agent one source of truth. This guide explains the problem, how RTK works, the merge and memory contracts, presets, and how it compares to alternative handoff tools. ...







