Handoff

A maintainer handoff is the process of transferring maintainership of a project from one person (the original maintainer) to another (the successor). It's a process, not an event — the 5-step playbook in /guides/find-a-new-maintainer covers the canonical structure: announce, recruit, vet, hand over, follow up.

The 5 steps are: (1) Announce the handoff publicly — a GitHub issue, a README badge, the adopt-me topic, an email to active contributors. (2) Recruit — actively look for someone who has the skills and time, not just hoping. (3) Vet — review the candidate's contributions, give them a small task first, see how they communicate. (4) Hand over — add them as a collaborator, transfer the domain/hosting/keys, document the release process, sign off publicly. (5) Follow up — stay available for 30 days to answer questions, then gracefully exit.

The handoff is the highest-leverage activity in the open source ecosystem. A successful handoff keeps the project alive for years. A failed handoff is what produces abandoned projects. The 41% recovery rate for projects with a handoff mechanism (vs 0% for projects without) is the data that makes the case.