<a id="path-spec.txt-2.3"></a>

# Cannibalizing circuits

If we need a circuit and have a clean one already established, in
some cases we can adapt the clean circuit for our new
purpose. Specifically,

For hidden service interactions, we can "cannibalize" a clean internal
circuit if one is available, so we don't need to build those circuits
from scratch on demand.

We can also cannibalize clean circuits when the client asks to exit
at a given node -- either via the ".exit" notation or because the
destination is running at the same location as an exit node.
