Continue in a fresh session with a handover

A long session gets heavy. Each request sends the whole conversation to the model again, so a session of hundreds of thousands of tokens answers slower and uses more of your limit than a new one would. The usual fix is to open a new session and explain where things stand, which means writing a long message yourself.

The handover does that for you in one click. The old session writes a note for its successor, the studio opens a new session in the same project with the note as its first message, and you carry on there.

When to use it

The session header shows how full the window is. From 60 percent the chip is coloured and the studio suggests a handover (see the context bar). It also fits when you finish one piece of work and begin another in the same project: the next piece does not need every earlier detail on every request.

A handover is a summary. What the old session left out of its note is not in the new one. The old session stays in your list, unchanged, so you can still read it.

Do it

1. Open the session. The sign for a fresh session stands in the row under the prompt box; it appears while the session's program is running, which is for a while after a turn. It is disabled while a turn works and says "when the turn ends".
2. Look at the figure on the sign, such as "≈ $0.09". It is the estimated cost of writing the note: one call of the last turn plus a half.
3. If you want the new session to use another tool, choose it in the chooser beside the sign, which lists the tools found on that computer: Claude Code, Codex or Grok. The box then says which tool the new session will start with.
4. Click Continue in a fresh session.

The old session is asked for its handoff. When it has written it, the studio starts the new session and takes you there. Nothing is asked of you in between.

What the new session starts with

The handoff holds the goal, what is done, the decisions and why, what is open, the files that matter and the next step, with the prose in your reply language. The new session begins with the same model, effort and account as the old one (unless you chose another tool), and with a name derived from the old one, like "Name 2".

Its first message is the handoff under a header that names the old session and tells the new one to read it, open the files, say what comes first and wait for you. In the conversation that message is one folded line, "AigoPilot started this session with the handoff of the session ...", so it does not pass for something you typed. Both sessions carry a note with a way to the other. The new session's context starts with the handoff instead of the whole earlier conversation.

What it costs, and when it fails

The note is one model call that reads the cached conversation and writes a page. In a trial with a Claude Code session of about 150,000 tokens, the call cost 16 cents of the allowance, at API value. The figure on the sign is an estimate of that kind, and says so.

If the old session cannot write its note, for example because its allowance is used up, nothing is lost: the old session is left as it was, and a card offers to start the new session from the studio's own record of the conversation instead, with a button "Start with Claude Code from the record" (or the tool you chose).

If the context is full and a handover will not fit either, compact first with /compact from slash commands. For other ways to spend less, see how AigoPilot saves tokens.

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