chameleon-pause-15m

name	chameleon-pause-15m
description	Use when the user explicitly invokes /chameleon-pause-15m to temporarily suppress chameleon's advisory injections for 15 minutes

/chameleon-pause-15m

Pause chameleon's per-edit layer for 15 minutes by default. Auto-resumes after the timer expires. Use when latency is unwelcome for a short focused window (e.g. live coding, code review walkthrough, demo).

Like /chameleon-disable, a pause is a FULL per-edit opt-out for its window: while paused the PreToolUse hook early-returns, so no <chameleon-context> is injected AND the PreToolUse enforcement denies (secret-detected-in-content, eval-call, import-preference-violation) do NOT fire. If the goal is to keep advisory guidance but stop only the blocking, use CHAMELEON_ENFORCE=0 instead — pause turns everything off, CHAMELEON_ENFORCE=0 keeps advisory ON and blocking OFF.

The underlying pause_session action accepts any integer in [1, 240] minutes; the -15m slash command alias is the default convenience. If a different duration is needed, call chameleon-mcp::chameleon_lifecycle(action="pause_session", params={"repo": <repo>, "minutes": N}) directly.

When to use

• User is presenting / demoing and wants minimal hook latency
• User is doing rapid scratch experimentation in a TS repo
• User wants to compare AI output with vs without chameleon active over a short window
• Frustration detected → callout-detector hook surfaces this as a less-permanent option than /chameleon-disable

When NOT to use

• The frustration is about pattern advice quality → /chameleon-teach to capture the missed pattern
• The frustration is about session-long latency → /chameleon-disable (session-scope) or run /chameleon-doctor

Prerequisites

pause_session requires a trust grant. If the repo has no .trust record, the tool returns status: failed with a message to run /chameleon-trust first.

The flow

1. Call chameleon-mcp::chameleon_lifecycle(action="pause_session", params={"repo": <repo_root>, "minutes": 15}).
2. The tool writes ${PLUGIN_DATA}/<repo_id>/.pause_until with the ISO 8601 expiry on line 1 and an HMAC sig= line under it.
3. PreToolUse hook checks .pause_until:
   • If file missing or expired → inject normally (auto-cleans expired markers)
   • If timestamp in future AND the signature verifies → skip injection (a hand-planted or forged marker is ignored, same defense as the session-disable marker)
4. Confirm to user: "chameleon paused for 15 minutes (until <expires_at returned by the tool>). Will auto-resume."

Opt-out hierarchy

See chameleon-disable skill for the full hierarchy. pause-15m is the most-temporary option.

Implementation status

Hook integration is wired: preflight-and-advise calls is_chameleon_suppressed before injecting, which honors .pause_until (auto-expires), .session_disabled.<sha256(session_id)[:16]>, CHAMELEON_DISABLE=1, and .chameleon/.skip.

Future variants

If 15m is the wrong duration for some users, future versions may add /chameleon-pause-1h and /chameleon-pause-until-restart. The pause_session action already accepts a minutes arg up to 240 (4 hours).