Hark says its free pizza night ran 203,500 Handoff browser sessions

What you can do now: if you connected Gmail or Outlook to Hark for the free pizza, you can request an export of what Hark holds on you, right in the app. One user, Aaron Makelky, posted that his export showed 934 Gmail messages, 415 calendar events and 177 contacts after less than 48 hours. That's one user's report. Steps are below.

What changed#

At 6:32 PM ET Friday, Hark started giving away "$1,000,000 of pizza right now all across the U.S." You typed "order a free pizza" in Hark Pro, Hark offered three DoorDash restaurants, and its agent built the order in your own DoorDash account with a $30 gift card. Just after 3 AM ET Saturday, it was over. Brett Adcock, who founded Hark (Business Wire), posted at 3:14 AM ET: "Pizza's are sold out!" and "We delivered thousands of Friday night pizzas fully end to end - logins, computer use, payment. Over 203,500 browser sessions were run via our model Handoff". Those are his claims. Hark's own account put it at 3:01 AM ET at "Tens of thousands of pizzas delivered", which is Hark's claim.

Before vs after: Adcock said Handoff served 1,000,000 browser sessions in Pro's first seven days. This one night added 203,500, by his count.

Why it matters#

Our read: this was one of the largest public tests so far of a consumer agent that logs in, orders and pays for you on someone else's site. By Hark's account it mostly worked, and it showed the cost: for a $30 pizza, many people gave an AI assistant their inbox. The numbers are Adcock's and Hark's. Nobody outside Hark has checked them.

How to see what Hark kept#

1. In the Hark app, tap your initials icon at the top right.
2. Open System Preferences, then Data Management.
3. Tap Export your data, then Request.

That path comes from one user, Aaron Makelky, who posted it with his results. Another user, zachdxtr, warned that "Deleting the app DOES NOT revoke access to your Google data!" and suggested asking Hark to delete your data first, then removing Hark at myaccount.google.com/connections. Prompt (ours):

List every account and inbox you can access for me, what you've saved from each one, and how I can remove it. Don't delete anything yet.

Good to know#

• Some people were charged in full. Hark said "There was a bug for a short period of time when the promo was not applied and some users were charged in full," and that its team "will be in touch directly with those affected." Adcock put it at "~30min."
• The backend buckled, by the founder's account. Adcock posted at 9:47 PM ET Friday: "The backend has gone down 2x, and we've shipped 2 hotfixes so far." On Saturday he said "a big backend database" went down "for 30min." Hark's status page showed no incident as of 1:22 PM ET Sunday.
• The email rule was mixed. Hark's instructions said "we require an email to be connected to reduce fraud." Its offer terms say "You do not have to connect one."
• The terms limit Hark's use of your accounts. For the offer, Hark's terms say DoorDash and email access "will not be used by Hark for any other purpose" and "From your email account, no messages will be sent."
• Hark reset "everyone's daily usage limit" about an hour before the giveaway, according to Adcock's post at 5:33 PM ET.

What to watch#

Whether Hark confirms that everyone charged in full got their money back, whether it publishes a status note for Friday's outage (status.hark.com still lists no incidents), and whether it runs another giveaway like this one.