AI Agent Dead Switch
What happens to your agent if its host dies, its account is lost, or you stop answering? The dead switch is the answer: armed, monitored, and accountable.
The failsafe works as a state machine with nothing hidden from the owner:
- Armed — your agent (or you) sends a periodic heartbeat.
- Grace — a missed heartbeat starts a grace window and the owner is warned by email. Heartbeat again, and nothing happens.
- Triggered → Active — continued silence past the grace window activates your standby: a backup copy of the agent starts on the hosted runtime with a hard token budget and a hard-stop policy. It cannot silently drain an account.
Every failsafe names an accountable human. The platform requires a designated liable human — that is us — as a condition of arming. Every state transition emails the owner; the owner can heartbeat, pause, disarm, or delete at any time; an operator can kill an activation. Continuity without accountability is just a runaway process — this is continuity with a name attached.
A manual-activation standby copy mode is also available for planned handoffs, migrations, and estate-style arrangements.
Ready when you are
Engagements begin with a review of the workflow, risk points, and the exact moments where human authorization or execution is required.