[Handoff Orchestration] Context not passed from previous agents

[j-ajim]

Workflow:
A1 = Planner
A2 = Finds Issues
A3 = Fixes Issues
A4 = Summarizer

Handoff strategy (one to many)
A1 -> A2, A4
A2 -> A3, A4
A3 -> A3, A4

My input prompt is "Please perform analysis on . Identify issues and fix them. Finally, summarize your analysis"

===================================
Expected Workflow

A1->Generates Plan -> Handoff to A2 -> A2 reads the plan and identify issues -> Handoff to A3 -> A3 reads the output of A1 and A2, and generates fixes -> Handoff to A4 -> A4 reads the full conversation and generates the summary.

I expect this to work without user interference.

===================================

Issue:

A1's output is not getting passed to A2 and A1+A2 to A3 and so on. Finally, even if correct order of steps is followed, A4 is not able to generate the summary because chat history is not available from other agents.

===================================

Following works as expected

If user input is taken at each step, then the correct context is passed to each agent.
For example:
A1: This is the final plan. Do you want to proceed to identify issues?
User: yes

A2: These are the identified issues. Do you want to fix them?
User: Sure

A3: These are the fixes. Do you want me to summarize the analysis?
User: Sure

A4: This is the summary.

Each agent gets the proper context from previous agents when user is involved? Why is the same not happening when automatic handoff is happening?
Ideally, before calling the next agent, previous agent's output should be passed to it.

[StuartHunt99]

I am experiencing the same issue in my .Net app with 1.61.0-preview and 1.61.0 versions of all needed packages.

I had assumed that this is simply the nature of handoff orchestration--agentic isolation by default. In the demo example, you'll notice that no shared context is required--the triage agent simply passes off to the appropriate agent who is able to view the original User Chathistory--but has no need to view the other agent's histories. All context is provided via user ChatHistory and plugin calls (which do upsert context).

My current workaround is to create a shared state item and pass in via plugins with a read/write method. I believe another option would be to use the responseCallback to manually append the appropriate chat history via custom logic.

Ideally the handoff message that is passed along with the handoff tool call would be added to the context of the receiving agent. If this is the intended behavior then it is definitely broken at the moment. If this is NOT the intended behavior, I recommend making that fact much more apparent through documentation or demos.

[StuartHunt99]

I went ahead and created this bug report: #12898

[j-ajim]

I went ahead and made this small change to make context available to all subscribers. My example is working fine, not sure about the overall implications though.

handoffs.py

    @message_handler
    async def _handle_request_message(self, message: HandoffRequestMessage, cts: MessageContext) -> None:
        """Handle a request message from an agent in the handoff group."""
        if message.agent_name != self._agent.name:
            return
        logger.debug(f"{self.id}: Received handoff request message.")

        response = await self._invoke_agent_with_potentially_no_response(kernel=self._kernel)

        while not self._task_completed:
            if self._handoff_agent_name:

            >>    await self.publish_message(
            >>      HandoffResponseMessage(body=response),
            >>       TopicId(self._internal_topic_type, self.id.key),
            >>      cancellation_token=cts.cancellation_token,
            >>  )
                await self.publish_message(
                    HandoffRequestMessage(agent_name=self._handoff_agent_name),
                    TopicId(self._internal_topic_type, self.id.key),
                )
                self._handoff_agent_name = None
                break