Apparatus, methods, processing systems, and computer readable mediums enable L1 (physical layer) and L2 (medium access control (MAC) layer) inter-cell mobility. More specifically, rules and operations performed during L1/L2 based cell handover operations. A user equipment (UE) is configured to receive, from a network entity of a source cell via at least one of L1 or L2 signaling, a handover command for the UE to handover from the source cell to a target cell. The UE determines at least one transient period during which the UE is served by both the source cell and the target cell, and performs the handover while communicating with the source cell and target cell during the transient period.