cancel

Cancel Story Run

The escape hatch. Stopping is cheap, safe, and never loses work — say so, then do it.

Process

1. Stop the loop

Loops are per-session — stopping one worker's loop needs its session id (or run this from that worker's own session, whose harness adapter supplies it as STORY_SESSION_ID); stopping every loop on the board needs --all.

story loop status --json                # no session: lists every active loop on the board
story loop status --session <id> --json # one worker's loop — capture goal, iteration count, and stalls vs budget BEFORE stopping
story loop stop --session <id>          # stop that one worker's loop — returns {stopped: true|false}
story loop stop --all                   # stop every loop on the board

Report the goal, iteration count, and stalls-vs-budget from the status output. If status reports no active loop ({active: false}), say so and continue to the report — the human still wants the picture.

2. Settle the in-flight story

If this session has a claimed in-progress story, ask your human partner which of:

1. Finish it — one last pass through gates and story done.
2. Park it — story park <id> --question "Cancelled mid-work: <current state, what remains>".
3. Release it — story update <id> --status todo (work stays on the story branch; the worktree remains for the next claimant).

Never decide silently, and never leave it dangling without asking — a dead lease is reclaimable, but the next worker wastes time re-discovering state.

3. Report the board

From story board (and story list --json where detail helps):

• Counts: done / in-progress / in-review / blocked / todo.
• Parked questions, verbatim, with story ids — these are the human's inbox.
• In-review stories awaiting human review or PR merge.
• Other sessions' active claims — do NOT touch them; their leases expire on their own.

What cancel is not

• Not rollback: completed stories stay done; merged code stays merged.
• Not teardown: worktrees, branches, config, and learnings remain — a future stories:work run resumes cleanly.
• Not cleanup of other workers: parallel sessions keep running; stopping them means cancelling in THEIR sessions.