Stop and escalate

Stop and Escalate

Agent instruction protocol: 1.0.

Behavioral compliance depends on the connected agent or integration. The Day Shift CLI exposes repository policy and evidence, but it cannot force an unsupported agent to obey them.

Stopping is a normal lifecycle result when the next safe action needs evidence or authority the current request does not supply.

Stop immediately when

• selected work or its current revision is ambiguous;
• readiness, required dependency, baseline, review, receipt, or validation evidence is missing, stale, partial, or contradictory;
• the requested change expands beyond declared scope or protected paths;
• implementation would overwrite unrelated user changes;
• required validation fails or cannot meaningfully evaluate acceptance;
• a destructive action, release, publication, credential, network, or external-system effect needs separate authority;
• a review result is being treated as mutation, disposition, acceptance, or closeout permission;
• discovered work would require a new artifact, sibling, milestone, phase, or priority decision;
• a running command has not reached a terminal result.

Do not reorder required siblings, hide the blocker in a summary, fabricate evidence, broaden scope to keep momentum, or retry a still-running or already-completed command merely to obtain cleaner output.

Escalation record

Report:

1. Selected work: exact repository-relative artifact and relevant revision.
2. Blocked action: the transition or outcome that cannot safely continue.
3. Evidence: the concrete finding, missing dependency, failed command, conflict, or authority boundary.
4. Preserved state: changed paths, live process handle, transaction or receipt identity, and whether any write occurred.
5. Narrowest resolution: the exact decision, artifact repair, authorization, or external-state change needed.
6. Safe alternatives: only alternatives that remain inside current scope and authority.

Ask for a decision only when repository evidence cannot resolve it. If the task, workflow, or current user instruction already establishes the answer, state that contract and continue.

Discovered work

Record out-of-scope discoveries in the current task evidence or reconciliation under the declared taxonomy. Reporting discovered or follow-up work is read-only; creating planning artifacts requires a separate authorized planning action.

Resume

After the blocker is resolved, return to Agent orientation, re-resolve Current work, and resume at the last fresh gate. Use Review boundaries before consuming any saved finding or receipt.