| name | under-shirt |
| description | Use Under Shirt when a catastrophic failure is possible and the system needs a last-resort failsafe that prevents total collapse, leaving it barely functional instead of dead. |
Under Shirt
Survive the unsurvivable by the thinnest margin.
Overview
Use Under Shirt when a catastrophic failure is possible and the system needs a last-resort failsafe that prevents total collapse, leaving it barely functional instead of dead.
This is the secondary Codex compatibility rendering of a hybrid battle-chip pattern with a shipping-now execution model.
Canonical chip family: Under Shirt
Codex shelf: Defense and Recovery
Provider target: Codex compatibility surface.
When To Use
- Before deploying a high-risk change that could catastrophically break the system, wire up a last-resort rollback or kill switch.
- A service is in a fragile state and needs a failsafe that prevents total data loss or full outage.
- Setting up incident response and needing a dead-man switch that keeps the system barely functional through worst-case scenarios.
Workflow
- Identify the catastrophic failure path — the exact scenario where total collapse is possible.
- Install a minimal survival mechanism at the critical point: a rollback checkpoint, circuit breaker, or data snapshot.
- Verify the failsafe triggers correctly under simulated lethal conditions and document that it exists.
Deliverables
- A one-shot failsafe mechanism that prevents total system collapse.
- Documentation marking the failsafe's location, trigger condition, and that it is a last-resort safety net.
Guardrails
- This is a one-time, last-resort safety net — not a defense strategy. If you rely on it repeatedly, fix the underlying problem.
- The failsafe must leave the system in a minimum viable state, not silently corrupted.
- Never let the existence of an Under Shirt failsafe justify riskier deployments.
Default Invocation
Use Under Shirt to install a last-resort failsafe that prevents total catastrophic collapse, leaving the system barely functional if the worst case happens.
