Handoff MCP v0.27.0 is out. This release is about the install experience rather than new features: the npm package now ships prebuilt binaries, so it works regardless of what build tooling you have.

No Rust Toolchain Required

Until now, npm install -g handoff-mcp-server compiled the project from source on your machine at install time. That meant you needed a Rust toolchain and a C++ linker, and the install simply failed if they were missing.

As of v0.27.0, npm downloads the binary matching your platform directly. Nothing is compiled.

Platform	x64	arm64
Linux (glibc 2.35+)	✅	✅
macOS	✅	✅
Windows	✅	✅

WSL works as a plain Linux install. For anything outside that list — musl/Alpine, FreeBSD, 32-bit, or glibc older than 2.35 — use cargo install handoff-mcp to build from source as before. If you already have your own build, point the npm wrapper at it with HANDOFF_MCP_BINARY_PATH.

The Silent Breakage Under npm v12

This is the most important fix in the release.

npm v12 disables package install scripts by default. Handoff MCP used exactly such a script to build itself, which meant that the install reported success while the CLI failed at startup with "binary not found." Because nothing errored during installation, the cause was genuinely hard to track down.

v0.27.0 runs no scripts at install time at all. There is no script left to be skipped, so nothing can silently break. Installing with --omit=optional still skips the binary itself, but it now reports the cause instead of failing quietly.

As a side benefit, no arbitrary code runs at install time anymore, removing one supply-chain attack surface entirely.

Windows Support

npm install -g handoff-mcp-server now works on Windows, where it previously failed with EBADPLATFORM. Linux, macOS, and WSL installs are unaffected.

Two Windows-specific bugs are fixed alongside it:

~/ path expansion in config.toml — scan_dirs entries starting with ~/ were never expanded, because only the POSIX HOME variable was consulted. The result was that handoff_dashboard and handoff_refer silently skipped every configured directory. USERPROFILE is now used as a fallback, and ~\ is accepted alongside ~/.
Transient write failures — saving a task or session while the VSCode extension held the file open could fail with a permission error. The write is now retried briefly.

Concurrent Write Corruption Fixed

Two threads writing to the same .handoff/ file simultaneously could pick identical temporary filenames and clobber each other's data. Temporary names are now unique per write.

Signed macOS arm64 Binaries

The macOS arm64 binary is ad-hoc codesigned, so it will not be terminated with Killed: 9 the way an unsigned binary would be.

Install / Update

npx handoff-mcp-server@latest

If you are using the Claude Code plugin:

/plugin install alphaelements/handoff-mcp

View Handoff case studies