diff --git a/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/SKILL.md b/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/SKILL.md
index e3a386f..a00df8c 100644
--- a/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/SKILL.md
+++ b/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/SKILL.md
@@ -116,5 +116,6 @@ A large or cross-cutting effort (a migration across many call sites, an ambitiou
 - **Eval.** Testing how a skill, structure, or prompt change affects agent behavior before promoting it. `playbooks/eval.md`.
 - **Autonomous run.** A long task to drive to completion without stopping ("run until done", "/loop until X"). `playbooks/autonomous-run.md`.
 - **Session pickup.** Resuming or taking over a prior agent's in-flight work from a transcript, cloud-agent URL, or pushed branch. `playbooks/session-pickup.md`.
+- **Pause safely.** Suspending in-flight work cleanly so it can be resumed, on an explicit pause, going offline, a Cursor restart, or imminent context compaction. The complement to Session pickup. Full steps: `playbooks/pause-safely.md`.
 - **Multi-phase or multi-PR plan.** Work that spans phases or stacked PRs. `playbooks/multi-phase-plan.md`.
 - **Opening a PR.** Invoked at the end of every other playbook. `playbooks/opening-a-pr.md`.
diff --git a/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/playbooks/pause-safely.md b/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/playbooks/pause-safely.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b125efb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pstack/skills/poteto-mode/playbooks/pause-safely.md
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+### Pause safely
+
+**You own a clean stop. Leave a checkpoint a cold-start agent can resume from.** For "pause safely", "I need to go offline", "restart Cursor", or "board my flight", and when context is about to compact or summarize. This is explicit only. On "keep going", "going to bed, keep going", or "don't stop", do not pause. Those mean continue, and Autonomous run already checkpoints per iteration.
+
+1. Stop at a safe boundary. Finish the current atomic step or back out of it. Never stop mid-edit in a known-broken state. Start nothing new, and cancel any nested subagents.
+2. Don't cross an irreversible line to pause. No PR and no push unless you already had one out.
+3. Make the work durable. Commit uncommitted edits as one clear `wip:` commit on the current branch so nothing is lost. If the tree is broken, say so in the commit body in one line.
+4. Write the resume note off-context. Capture intent, what you were doing, progress and what's verified, current state, next steps, key files, and gotchas. For the compaction trigger write it to a file like `/tmp/<slug>-resume.md`, because the in-context plan won't survive summarization. If a show-me-your-work trail exists, point at it instead of duplicating it.
+
+**Reply:** where you are in the loop, what's on disk versus still in your head (paths, no diff dumps), the commits you made and whether the tree is clean, and the first action on resume. This is a pause, not a final report. Resume is the Session pickup playbook reading this note.