Take-over & hand-back

Sometimes approving and steering isn't enough — you want the wheel. Take-over pauses a run and lets you pick up the agent's own session in a terminal or multiplexer pane and drive it directly; loopkeep's safety floor stays on the whole time. Hand-back returns the run to the agent to keep running, with your changes accounted for.

Taking over

Take-over pauses the run and continues the agent's own session — same conversation, same memory. The agent knows what it was doing and now also remembers what you discuss and change. You can talk to it, edit files in the run's worktree directly, or both. When loopkeep can drive a multiplexer, the session opens in a new pane — the same space and tab as attended runs, named after the run — otherwise it opens in your current terminal.

While you drive, loopkeep's policy gates step aside — the segment is yours and is audited as such (start and end markers, plus your changes as a checkpoint). The one gate that stays on is the built-in floor: writes to loopkeep's own supervision machinery still ask, no matter who's driving.

Choose Take over on a run's Inbox card (while it's waiting) or its Runs ⋯ menu, and confirm. The app doesn't open a terminal itself — it shows the command to run. Recommended is lk take-over <run>, which starts claude behind the floor. If loopkeep can drive a multiplexer, a button opens the session in a new pane there for you; if you've set a preferred terminal, Open in terminal opens it in a terminal window instead; otherwise Copy the command and run it yourself. While you drive, the run shows as You are driving this run in the inbox and its detail.

Handing back

Hand-back commits your changes as a checkpoint (loopkeep: human take-over plus your summary), generates a diff summary, injects it into the run's context, and resumes the run. The agent continues with an accurate picture of what changed while you drove.

Click Hand back on the driving card in the Inbox, on the run's detail, or in the take-over command dialog.

Non-git workspaces

Session continuation works anywhere. The diff summary and the take-over checkpoint need git, so in a plain folder hand-back resumes the run without them.

When to reach for it

Steering (lk approve --steer) is cheaper when a sentence of guidance is enough. Take-over earns its keep when the fix is easier to make than to describe — untangling a wrong turn by hand, then handing the loop back.