panic

name	panic
description	Emergency kill switch — halts all agents via lockfile gate. Triggers: panic, stop everything, kill switch, halt agents, agents looping.
effort	low
disable-model-invocation	true
agent	system-governor
context	fork
allowed-tools	Bash

Panic Command (The Kill Switch)

Stops the system dead in its tracks.

Usage

/panic [reason]
# Example: /panic "Agents are looping infinitely"

Protocol

1. Create Lockfile: touch .claude/HALT
2. Notify User: "System Halted. Delete .claude/HALT to resume."

Resume

To resume operations:

rm .claude/HALT

Rules

• MUST create the lockfile at .claude/HALT — agents check this path to gate execution
• NEVER bypass the lockfile silently once it exists
• CRITICAL: emit a clear, single-line notification so the user knows the system is halted
• MANDATORY: include the provided reason (if any) in the notification

Gotchas

• The lockfile is project-local (./.claude/HALT). Agents running in a different working directory, or globally-invoked tools, will not see it and will keep running. /panic is not a system-wide kill switch.
• The lockfile check relies on the PreToolUse hook from ai-toolkit; if the user disabled hooks in settings.json or ejected without keeping hooks, touch .claude/HALT does nothing. Verify the hook is present after invocation.
• Removing .claude/HALT mid-task resumes agents that were blocked, but they resume with potentially stale context (conversation moved on, tool results orphaned). Prefer restarting the session cleanly if possible.

When NOT to Use

• For cancelling a single agent — use the task's own stop mechanism
• For a production incident — use /workflow incident-response
• As a rollback tool — use /rollback
• To pause for a short clarification — just ask the question, do not halt the system