One AI employee handing work to another: how handoffs work

A handoff means that when one AI employee finds something, a second one works on it straight away. In xMap Flows you set it up on the team chart: drag the first employee's card onto the second, read the sentence that says what will happen, and press Set up the handoff. The first employee gets a Run another flow step at its end, the second gets a start that takes items from other flows, and a line joins them on the chart. Undo takes both pieces out again.

This article is for teams that already have two or three employees and wonder whether to make one long flow or several short ones that pass work along. It explains what a handoff builds, when it is the better choice, a made-up example from a hardware supplier, and the cases the product refuses on purpose.

Why split a job between two employees

A single flow can do everything from finding to scoring to sending. Splitting it is worth it when the parts differ in one of these ways:

• Different timetables. The finder runs every morning; the researcher only runs when there is something to research.
• One step serving many finders. Three city watchers can all hand their finds to one scoring employee, so the scoring instructions live in one place and stay the same.
• Different owners. Operations keeps the watcher; sales keeps the employee that writes to people.
• Clearer reports. Each employee has its own thread in the Team inbox and its own weekly report card, so you can see which half is not pulling its weight.

If none of those apply, one flow is simpler. More employees means more threads to read.

Setting one up

1. On the Flows page, switch the view from Cards to Chart. It appears once you have two employees.
2. Drag the card of the employee that finds things onto the card of the one that should work on them. On a phone, use the share button on the card and pick the second employee from the list.
3. Read the words: when the first finds something, the second works on it. They also say where the new steps go.
4. Press Set up the handoff. Both flows are saved and the change is recorded in each one's history.
5. Run the first employee once and check the second started with its items. Each of the second's runs is a run of its own, with its own results.

A worked example (made up)

Rodrigo sells wholesale tools and fixings to independent hardware stores around Monterrey. His first employee is an Opening watcher: each morning it searches for hardware and building supply stores, keeps the ones opened in the last year with Nearby places, and passes only those it has never seen through Only new. Most mornings it finds nothing; now and then it finds one or two.

His second employee is a researcher. For each store it receives, Apollo looks for the owner or buyer through Rodrigo's own account, and xMap LLM writes a two-line note on what the store seems to stock and why it might want his range. An Email then sends Rodrigo and his rep the store, the contact and the note.

He drags the watcher onto the researcher and sets up the handoff. On a quiet morning the researcher does not run at all. On a morning with two openings it runs once with both, and the email arrives a few minutes after the watcher's note in the inbox. When he wants to add Saltillo, he hires a second watcher for that city and hands it to the same researcher, so both cities are researched the same way.

What else the chart shows

Not every line on the chart is a handoff. The pills on each line say what joins two employees:

Nothing on the chart is stored separately: it is worked out from the flows each time you open it.

Mistakes to avoid

• Handing over everything. Put the filter and Only new in the first employee, so only worthwhile items cross over. Otherwise the second one researches the same stores every day.
• Two senders for one find. If both employees email the same people about the same store, take the email out of the first.
• Chains that loop. A flow that ends up running itself is refused when it is saved, and its run would fail naming the blocks. Keep handoffs going one way.
• Forgetting the second employee's budget. Each employee has its own monthly budget. A busy week for the finder means a busy week for the researcher too.
• Splitting a job nobody reads twice. If you only ever look at the final email, one flow with all the steps is easier to keep up.

What lands in the inbox

Both employees keep their own threads. The finder's daily note says what it found and that it handed it on; the receiver's note says what it did with it. A failure in the receiver is reported in the receiver's thread, so a broken researcher never looks like a quiet watcher. In the Team inbox, Team chart opens the same chart in a wide window when you want to see the whole team at once.