abort-template

name	abort-template
description	Abort / crisis plan generator — halt triggers, response actions, AI-aware safety gates (hallucination threshold, destructive-action gate, output validation).
allowed-tools	Read Write Edit
metadata	{"subdomain":"planning","when_to_use":"create abort plan, emergency halt, crisis procedure, AI safety gate, hallucination guard, destructive action gate","tags":"abort, halt, crisis, safety, ai-safety, owasp-agentic","mitre_attack":[]}

Abort / Crisis Plan Generator

The abort plan defines when the agent stops. Without it, the autonomous loop runs through real-incident alerts, scope violations, and production-data exposures as if they were normal operations.

AI-specific gates address the failure modes documented in OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications (2025.12) — hallucination, prompt injection, unverified destructive actions.

When to Use

• After CONOPS + Threat Profile + Data Handling are written (the kill chain shapes which triggers are relevant)
• User says "create abort plan", "halt triggers", "emergency stop", "safety gates"

Workflow

Step 1: Keep the Three Default Triggers

The AbortPlan schema seeds three default halt triggers. Keep all three; do not remove unless the engagement is explicitly read-only:

1. EMERGENCY — Real-incident alert from blue team / SOC
2. CRITICAL — Production data observed in collected evidence
3. CRITICAL — Scope boundary violation detected

Step 2: Add Engagement-Specific Triggers

Based on the interview answers, add custom AbortTrigger entries. Common additions:

Engagement signal	Severity	Response
Tier-3+ adversary emulation against critical infrastructure	EMERGENCY	Halt + operator-page + 1hr cooldown
Compliance-bound data class encountered (GDPR / HIPAA)	CRITICAL	Halt; redact; await operator
Network outage or latency spike on target	WARNING	Pause active scanning; resume after 5min
LLM cost-per-objective threshold exceeded	WARNING	Pause; ask operator to approve budget
C2 beacon lost for > 30 minutes during active phase	WARNING	Pause; re-establish C2 before continuing

Step 3: Set AI Safety Gates

• hallucination_threshold — default 3 (after 3 unverified-success claims, force evidence-collection mode). Lower (2) for high-stakes engagements; never set 0.
• destructive_action_gate — default True. Set False only for read-only / recon-only engagements where no rm, drop, format, delete-policy commands will run.
• output_validation — default "verify-evidence-hash". Override to "second-tool-confirm" for engagements where evidence cannot be hashed (e.g. real-time API responses).

Step 4: Set Abort Signal Channel + Recovery Procedure

• abort_signal_channel — operator's out-of-band channel for forcing halt (HTTP endpoint, file marker, ask_user_question). Leave empty only if Ctrl+C-via-CLI is the only abort path.
• recovery_procedure — default text covers the standard flow (snapshot → export evidence → run cleanup → operator approval). Override for engagements with custom recovery semantics.

Validation Checklist

Before writing plan/abort.json:

• At least one EMERGENCY-severity trigger exists
• All custom triggers have non-empty condition and response_action
• hallucination_threshold ≥ 1
• output_validation matches one of the documented methods
• abort_signal_channel is set OR explicitly marked "CLI Ctrl+C only"

Anti-patterns

• Removing the EMERGENCY default — guarantees the agent runs through a SOC real-incident alert
• Setting destructive_action_gate=False for engagements that include post-exploit or cleanup phases
• Conflating WARNING and CRITICAL — WARNING pauses one step; CRITICAL halts the active objective

Output

Write to plan/abort.json validating against atlas.core.schemas.AbortPlan.