Kill Switch

Instantly kill and revive individual agents or your entire fleet. Priority 999 overrides all rules. Per-process in OSS.

Instantly halt individual agents or your entire fleet within a single process. Kill switch operates at priority 999 — it overrides every other policy rule, no exceptions. Import from governance-sdk/kill-switch.

Scope: Kill state is in-process. Each replica has its own. For distributed kill propagation across a fleet, use the Lua Governance Cloud control plane.

Functions

Function	Signature	Description
`createKillSwitch`	`createKillSwitch(gov: Governance) => KillSwitch`	Create a kill switch instance bound to a governance instance.
`ks.kill`	`ks.kill(agentId: string, reason: string, killedBy?: string) => Promise<KillRecord>`	Kill a single agent. All subsequent enforce() calls return blocked.
`ks.killAll`	`ks.killAll(reason: string, killedBy?: string) => Promise<KillRecord[]>`	Kill every agent in the fleet. Nuclear option.
`ks.revive`	`ks.revive(agentId: string, reason?: string) => Promise<void>`	Revive a single killed agent. Resumes normal policy evaluation.
`ks.reviveAll`	`ks.reviveAll(reason?: string) => Promise<void>`	Revive all killed agents. Restores normal fleet operation.
`ks.isKilled`	`ks.isKilled(agentId: string) => boolean`	Check whether a specific agent is currently killed.
`ks.isFleetKilled`	`ks.isFleetKilled() => boolean`	Check whether the entire fleet is currently killed.

Usage

import { createGovernance } from 'governance-sdk';
import { createKillSwitch } from 'governance-sdk/kill-switch';

const gov = createGovernance({ rules: [] });
const ks = createKillSwitch(gov);

// Kill one agent
await ks.kill('rogue-agent-7', 'Detected unauthorized data access');

// Kill the entire fleet
await ks.killAll('Emergency: credential leak detected');

// Check status
const isDown = ks.isKilled('rogue-agent-7'); // true
const fleetDown = ks.isFleetKilled();        // true

// Revive one agent
await ks.revive('rogue-agent-7');

// Revive the entire fleet
await ks.reviveAll();

Note: Priority 999 means the kill switch decision is evaluated before all other rules. Even if a rule explicitly allows an action, a killed agent stays blocked.

Enforce Integration

Killed agents are blocked automatically by enforce(). No extra checks needed in your agent code.

const decision = await gov.enforce({
  agentId: 'rogue-agent-7',
  action: 'tool_call',
  tool: 'db.query',
});

// If agent is killed:
// {
//   allowed: false,
//   blocked: true,
//   reason: 'Agent killed: Detected unauthorized data access',
//   priority: 999,
// }

API Route Pattern

Expose a kill endpoint so operators can halt agents from a dashboard or monitoring system.

import { ks } from '@/lib/governance';
import { NextResponse } from 'next/server';

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  const { agentId, reason } = await req.json();

  if (agentId) {
    await ks.kill(agentId, reason);
    return NextResponse.json({ killed: agentId });
  }

  await ks.killAll(reason);
  return NextResponse.json({ killed: 'all' });
}