# How hand-offs work.

> A hand-off gives one nest to someone you choose. You create a private link that expires, allows between one claim and a limit set by your plan, and can be revoked at any time. The recipient signs in, sees what the nest will run and where it fetches from, and claims it into their own drive. Nothing is copied: their drive points at the same checked files. There is no public link and no way to browse for one.

Canonical page: https://renest.ai/docs/handoff

<h2 id="send">You send a nest by creating a link for one version of it</h2>

<p>Open the nest in your drive and create a hand-off. A hand-off always points at one
stored version, so the recipient gets exactly what you packed, not whatever the nest
becomes later. Before the link is issued you confirm that you have the right to pass the
contents on.</p>

<p>Renest refuses to create a hand-off in three cases: the nest is still being checked
after upload; its dependencies could not be reinstalled on another machine, so the
recipient would download it only to fail at setup; or it was stopped by our safety policy.
In the last case the message does not say which file was the reason.</p>

<p>You get a link to send however you like. You can also enter the recipient's e-mail
address and Renest sends the link for you. Hand-off links open on
<code>get.nesthandoff.com</code>. Sending hand-offs needs a paid plan; how many you can
create each month depends on the plan (see <a href="/pricing">Pricing</a>).</p>

<h2 id="limits">Every link expires and allows a limited number of claims</h2>

<p>When you create a link you choose two things:</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>How long it stays valid.</strong> There is a default lifetime and a maximum;
you can pick anything up to the maximum.</li>
<li><strong>How many times it can be claimed.</strong> Any whole number from one up to the
limit set by your plan (see <a href="/pricing">Pricing</a>). One means the first person to
claim it uses it up. There is no unlimited option.</li>
</ul>

<p>Your list of hand-offs shows each link's claims so far, its expiry date and when you
created it. You can copy the link again from there at any time, and revoke it with one
click.</p>

<h2 id="preview">The link shows a short summary to anyone who has it, and nothing more</h2>

<p>Opening a hand-off link without signing in shows a summary. It changes nothing and
cannot be used to download anything. It lists only these things:</p>

<ul>
<li>the nest's name, total size, number of files and the date it was stored, and whether
every file was checked on upload;</li>
<li>who sent it, shortened to the first letters of each name, and whether the sender packed
it or received it from someone else;</li>
<li>the framework it rebuilds into, how many models of each kind it holds, how many custom
nodes and input files it has, and the Python and CUDA versions it was locked to;</li>
<li>how many files are left out of the hand-off;</li>
<li>when the link expires, and whether it can be claimed only once.</li>
</ul>

<p>It never shows file names, images, or an e-mail address. Sender names are shortened
because links get pasted into forums and chats, and full names there could be collected
into a list of who sends what. The page tells search engines not to index it, and each
visitor is limited to a small number of requests a minute.</p>

<h2 id="claim">Claiming puts the nest in your drive without copying it</h2>

<p>To claim, sign in and open the link, or paste the link or its code into the
<strong>Redeem</strong> page. Any account can claim, including a free one. Before you
claim, Renest shows what rebuilding the nest will do on your machine:</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>What runs:</strong> how many extensions and setup commands it contains, whether
those extensions match their original repositories or were edited, and how many of its
model files run code when they are loaded;</li>
<li><strong>Where it fetches from:</strong> the hosts your machine will contact during the
rebuild;</li>
<li><strong>Files you fetch yourself:</strong> a count of the files left out because their
licence does not let them be passed on. The preview shows the count, not the files or their sources; the recipient's restore lists them all, with sources, before it downloads anything.</li>
</ul>

<p>Renest moves the sender's files exactly as they were packed. It does not inspect or vouch
for them. So before the claim goes through, you confirm that you trust the sender. If the
sender received the nest from someone else, you are told that, and asked whether you checked
with them.</p>

<p>The claim moves no bytes. Your drive gets its own copy of the nest's record, pointing at
the same stored files, and you restore it like any other nest. Files you did not already
hold count toward your drive's space. Claiming the same nest twice, or a nest that is
already yours, does nothing and does not use up a claim.</p>

<h2 id="licences">Files whose licence forbids passing them on stay behind</h2>

<p>Some model files come with licences that do not allow redistribution, and some have no
licence Renest can confirm. Those files are not given to the recipient from Renest's
storage. Before anything downloads, the recipient's restore lists every one of them with its size and where it comes from. A file whose recorded source is public is fetched from that original source and checked against the nest. Any it can't fetch are named with the exact path to put them at, and the restore stops before the big download until they are in place. Your own material, such as a LoRA you trained, travels normally once you declare it with <code>--mine</code> when you pack; a file nothing recognises is held back by default.</p>

<p>The <a href="/docs/format-spec">format spec</a> describes the licence fields in the
manifest that decide this.</p>

<h2 id="dead">A dead link says why it stopped working</h2>

<p>A link stops working when it is revoked, expires, runs out of claims, when the sender
deletes the nest, or when the sender closes their account. Opening a link in any of those
states tells the recipient which one it is, so they know whether to ask for a new one.</p>

<p>Two cases give the same general message: a link that was never issued, and a hand-off
that was stopped by safety policy after it was created. Saying more about the second would
tell the sender what was caught.</p>

<p>Revoking a link stops future claims only. Anyone who already claimed keeps the nest: a
hand-off gives permission to take a copy once, not ongoing access.</p>

<h2 id="private">There is no public link, by design</h2>

<p>Renest has no public link, no listing of hand-offs and no way to search for them. A link
is a long random value that cannot be guessed. The short code you can type instead is
stored only as a fingerprint, and is shown once when the hand-off is created. The list of
hand-offs you can see contains only the ones you created. Every claim checks the link again
against the stored record: status, expiry, claims used, the safety policy and the
recipient's drive.</p>

<p>Renest works this way because of what a nest holds. It contains someone's working setup,
including model files with licences attached and custom code that will run on the
recipient's machine. A link that works for anyone who finds it is the wrong way to deliver
that. A hand-off goes from a named sender to a recipient who has signed in, it can be
revoked, and it can show what it contains before anyone claims it.</p>