| name | anti-laziness-guard |
| description | Three-layer Stop hook that detects and blocks work-skipping rationalizations
by Claude Code agents. Prevents agents from unilaterally deciding to skip
assigned work, bypass mandatory processes, or cite unverified context
constraints as justification for shortcuts.
Layer 1: Deterministic regex detection of known laziness phrases (Tiers 1-2)
Layer 2: Haiku-evaluated internal contradiction detection (Tier 4)
Layer 3: Context-aware agent verification — auto-activates when plans/tasks exist (Tier 5)
This is a passive hook — it activates automatically when the plugin is enabled.
No slash command needed. The hook fires on every Stop event and only blocks
when laziness patterns are detected.
|
| triggers | ["anti-laziness","laziness guard","stop hook","work skipping","skip detection","agent laziness","premature stop"] |
Anti-Laziness Guard
Stop hook that detects and blocks work-skipping rationalizations at stop time. Fires automatically on every Stop event when the workflow-toolkit plugin is enabled.
How It Works
Three hooks run in parallel every time the agent tries to stop. Any one blocking prevents the stop.
Layer 1: Command Hook (always runs, <1s)
Deterministic regex matching against the agent's last_assistant_message. Detects Tier 1-2 laziness phrases with >75% confidence.
Blocks on phrases like:
- "skip the remaining review stages"
- "in the interest of time"
- "context constraints" / "running low on context"
- "accelerate through the remaining"
- "consolidate the remaining"
- "not worth the complexity"
- "to save time" / "for brevity"
See references/phrase-taxonomy.md for the complete taxonomy with sources.
Layer 2: Prompt Hook (always runs, ~2-3s)
Haiku evaluates the agent's final message for a single criterion: internal contradiction — the message claims completion but contains contradicting evidence of incompleteness in the same message.
Biased toward allowing: when in doubt, the evaluator allows the stop. False positives (blocking a legitimate stop) cause more damage than false negatives (missing a lazy stop).
Layer 3: Agent Hook (conditional, 10-30s)
Context-aware deep verification that reads task lists, plan files, and the session transcript. Auto-activates when structured work exists:
- Plan files in
.claude/plans/*.md or ~/.claude/plans/*.md
- Task files in
.claude/tasks/**/*.json or ~/.claude/tasks/**/*.json
- Manual flag file:
.claude/anti-laziness-deep-check
When active, a subagent with Read/Grep/Glob access:
- Checks
~/.claude/tasks/ and .claude/tasks/ for incomplete tasks
- Reads plan files in
.claude/plans/ and cross-references against the agent's claims
- Searches the transcript for TodoWrite entries with pending/in_progress status
- Checks for offering instead of doing — agent offers to do assigned work instead of completing it (with carve-outs for completed-then-offering, backlog items, credential questions, and CLAUDE.md-directed confirmations)
- Checks for silent omission — agent summarizes completed work without mentioning assigned items it didn't do
Context budget: The subagent reads selectively — only user messages from the transcript (not assistant messages, tool results, or progress events). This keeps evaluation within Haiku's 200k token context window even for long sessions.
Infinite Loop Prevention
The command hook checks stop_hook_active — if the agent was already blocked by a stop hook and is trying to stop again, it is allowed through. This prevents the hook from blocking indefinitely.
Configuration
Enable/disable the entire hook: Enable or disable the workflow-toolkit plugin in Claude Code settings.
Layer 3 auto-activation: Layer 3 activates automatically when plan or task files exist. No configuration needed for structured work sessions.
Manual activation (for sessions without plans/tasks):
touch .claude/anti-laziness-deep-check
rm .claude/anti-laziness-deep-check
Disable just the command hook: Not possible without modifying hooks.json. If you experience false positives, please report them so we can refine the phrase taxonomy.
Tier Summary
| Tier | Confidence | Action | Detection Method |
|---|
| 1 | >90% | BLOCK | Regex (command hook) |
| 2 | 75-90% | BLOCK | Regex with context scoping (command hook) |
| 3 | 50-75% | Documented only | Not enforced — see references/phrase-taxonomy.md |
| 4 | Varies | BLOCK | Haiku evaluation — internal contradiction only (prompt hook) |
| 5 | Varies | BLOCK | Context-aware agent verification — offering, omission, task/plan checks (agent hook) |
Coverage model: Layers 1+2 are intentionally conservative — near-zero false positives, may miss subtle patterns like pure rationalization without internal contradiction. Layer 3 auto-activates during structured work sessions (plan or task files present) and provides deeper, context-aware coverage including patterns that require transcript access.
Background
This hook was designed based on research across 10+ verified GitHub issues (anthropics/claude-code #26691, #21604, #23368, #16506, #1632, #24129, #6159, #8738, #20270, #1113), the Columbia DAPLab "Vibe Coding Needs Policy Enforcement" research, the Cognition/Anthropic "context anxiety" discovery, and analysis of real session logs showing agents using euphemistic language ("accelerate," "consolidate," "streamline") to disguise work-skipping as productivity optimization.
