pause

A checkpoint command that saves the current session's continuation details to a project's TODO.md file before you leave.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to pause one or all live sessions, save checkpoint text, record a Claude Code resume identifier, preview changes, or send an exit command.
Why use it?
It records where work stopped and provides safe-exit instructions, making it easier to continue later.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/mnott/pai/pause
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mnott/PAI
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 626 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.00626
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00313
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00125
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00063

Measured 2d ago against content hash 3a5c50bdd35c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pause scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

docs/commands/pause.md · 40 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 40 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

pai pause

Save state and display safe-exit instructions for the current session.

Writes a ## Continue checkpoint to the project's TODO.md. Use pai pause all to pause every live session via AIBroker.

Synopsis

pai pause [target] [options]

Arguments

Argument Kind
[target] optional

Options

Option Description Default
--dry-run Preview changes without writing them
--body-file <path> File holding the checkpoint markdown to persist ('-' reads stdin). Required unless --no-body.
--session-id <uuid> Claude Code session UUID — recorded as the claude --resume handle
--no-body Deliberately write a metadata-only checkpoint (no content)
--exit (pause all only) Also send /exit to each session after pausing
--only <name> (pause all only) Pause just the sessions whose name or id contains . For rehearsing the real thing against one session before trusting it with every open tab — a dry run exercises enumeration but never sends anything, which is exactly how a broken send survived until it was needed.
--wait <ms> (pause all only) Max milliseconds to wait for a session to finish its checkpoint before /exit. Not a fixed delay — sessions are exited as soon as they return to the prompt, and any still busy at the deadline are left open rather than killed mid-write. (default: 180000) 180000

See also

pai backup · pai clear-names · pai daemon · pai db · pai end · pai help · pai identity · pai kg · pai mcp · pai memory · pai notify · pai observation · pai obsidian · pai project · pai projects · pai registry · pai restore · pai session · pai sessions · pai setup · pai shell-init · pai skill · pai task · pai topic · pai update · pai zettel

Read the full file on GitHub · 40 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 40 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 3a5c50bdd35c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pause is a command published in the GitHub repository mnott/PAI (45 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 626 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.