Parameters & values

Where a value comes from

Highest wins:

1. this run's --set NAME=VALUE (or what you type in the launch menu)
2. the applied preset (-p NAME)
3. the last-used value
4. the parameter's declared default

A required parameter with no value from any source fails non-interactively with exit 125 — skit never guesses.

Defaults come from the script

The launch menu prefills each parameter with the script's current default — skit re-reads the source every time, so editing a constant in the script updates the menu immediately (no stale manage-time cache; skit params --resync writes refreshed definitions back). After you've overridden a value, ↺ default (Ctrl+O) restores the script's own value.

When a CLI parser's default names a constant (default=DEFAULT_HOST in argparse/click/typer/parseArgs), skit resolves it to the literal — but only when that name is bound exactly once in the file and doesn't look like a secret. A secret-looking constant's literal never leaves the script's own text.

Empty means empty

Fields arrive prefilled with their default, so clearing one is a deliberate act: it delivers a real empty string ('') through inject, env, or flag delivery. --set NAME= expresses the same thing from the CLI. For types where empty can't be a value — int, float, bool, choice, secrets, and defaultless parameters — empty still means "unset". Agents can tell the two apart via the per-field delivers_empty in skit show --json.

What gets remembered

• Last-used values come back prefilled on the next run. A submitted value that equals the declared default is not stored — so a future change to the script's default isn't buried by an old run. To pin a value deliberately, use a preset: presets store the run verbatim, cleared fields included.
• The -- tail (extra arguments after --) is remembered per entry and replays on the next argument-less run, with a note on stderr. --forget-args clears it; --raw never replays it.
• Run history: each entry's state file records the last run's time, exit code, and exact values.
• All of this lives in skit's state directory (one TOML per entry) — see Environment variables for where that is and how to move it. Removing an entry removes its state.

Value tokens

Tokens work in any launch-menu value, --set value, and preset value. They are stored as written and expanded fresh on every run — a preset saying {cwd} means "wherever I run this", forever.

Only these names expand; any other {…} text passes through untouched, and {{ / }} escape to literal braces. The exception is prompt/command placeholder values, where {{ and }} pass through byte-identical (named tokens still expand).

Multi-value parameters additionally shell-split each piece and expand globs (recursive, rooted at the invoke directory). Extra -- ARGS from the CLI are not re-tokenized or globbed — they already went through your shell.

Secrets

A parameter marked secret is never persisted: not in last-used values, not in presets, not in run history — enforced structurally at every state write, and retroactively scrubbed if you mark an already-used parameter secret. Secret values are masked (•••) in --dry-run and command displays. To avoid typing them at all, --env-source NAME=ENVVAR reads the value from an environment variable at run time — only the variable's name is stored.

The value still reaches the running process, and prompts are not a secrets channel: a rendered prompt lands in the receiving agent's own session logs.