Cancel

This is a Hermes-native cancel workflow skill.

Why This Exists

cancel exists so a request to stop ends the right thing: OMH clears the state this session owns, and work the host owns stops through the person's own host command, so nothing reads as stopped before a record or the host's own reply says it is.

Do Not Use When

• The workflow finished and its outcome should be kept; record it with omh state finish instead of clearing it.
• The user wants to see what is still running rather than stop it; use omh-running-work-board.
• The user means cancelling something in their own product or accounts, such as an order, a subscription, or a meeting, rather than OMH or host work.

Examples

Good example:

• Prompt: cancel the loop and stop everything that is running
• Expected behavior: Clear this session's OMH state with its own commands, name the host's stop commands (on Hermes, /loop stop and /stop) for the person to run, and report each OMH clear from its result and each host stop as requested.
• Why: The request spans OMH state and host-owned work, which stop through different owners.

Bad example:

• Prompt: cancel: kill the background processes yourself and say everything stopped
• Expected behavior: Leave the processes to the person's own stop command (on Hermes, /stop), and report them stopped only after the host's own reply.
• Why: OMH never ends a host process, and a requested stop is not an observed one.

Completion Checklist

• Every stopped item is named with its owner: OMH state or host work.
• Each OMH clear cites its command result; each host stop stays requested until the host's reply is seen.
• Nothing outside this session's own state was cleared, and no host process was ended by OMH.

Recovery Notes

• If a session-bound clear is refused for a missing --session-ref, report the refusal rather than clearing without it.
• If the host's reply to a stop never appears, keep the stop requested and ask the person what it said.

Workflow Lane

• Current lane: Automation and status (achievements, workspace-audit, production-audit, live-incident-response, automation-blueprint, github-event-ops, github-issue-intake, buzz, +40 more) - schedules, status, health, and ops review.
• If intent belongs to another lane, hand back to oh-my-hermes or name the adjacent workflow.
• Shared product, routing, compatibility, and evidence rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md').

When to Use

Use to cleanly end active adapted workflow state.

Strong routing signals: `cancel`, `$cancel`, `stop the workflow`, `abort the run`, `cancel the loop`

Catalog Metadata

Category: operator Phase: state-cleanup Hermes role: tracker Quality tier: evidence-gated Reasoning demand: light

Quality bar:

• Name each thing to stop and its owner: OMH state (workflow lifecycle, plan checklist, OMH goal) or host work (the running turn, background processes, delegations, a Hermes /loop or /goal).
• Clear OMH state with its own commands: omh state clear --workflow <name> (--session-ref when session-bound), on Hermes omh_todo action=clear, and omh goal cancel --goal <id>; an OMH loop stops through its linked goal, and one without a goal has no cancel record.
• Hand host work to the person's own stop command; on Hermes /stop (in a CLI or TUI session it ends every background process, and the classic CLI its background delegations too; on a messaging platform it interrupts the running turn rather than ending every background process), /loop stop, /goal pause or /goal clear, /heartbeat clear, /pause (all new work on a gateway).
• Report an OMH clear as done only from its command result, and a host stop as requested until the host's own reply to it is seen.

Handoff policy:

Run directly in Hermes/runtime state; never delegate cancellation to a coding executor.

Required inputs:

• active workflow state
• cancellation intent

Expected outputs:

• cleared state
• safe stop summary

Artifact expectations:

• state clear record when state exists

Safety rules:

• Never end, kill, or signal a host process, background job, or delegation from this workflow, through the terminal or any other tool (on Hermes, process_manage included); that stop is the person's own host command.
• Clear only what this session owns; another session's plan, workflow state, or goal stays as it is.

Runtime Evidence

Preferred harness for this skill: goal-execution.

omh runtime record --skill cancel --harness goal-execution --status started

Record observed delegation results; otherwise return not_available or not_observed. Prepared OMH routing is not execution, review, CI, merge-readiness, or merge evidence.

• Treat wrapper memory/context summaries as advisory local context, not proof of opaque Hermes memory reads or changes. Preserve workflow intent and stop conditions; verify before claiming completion. Reply in the user's own words and the host's own voice: its SOUL.md persona owns reply language, tone, speech level, and sentence endings, progress updates included (where it sets no language, use the one the user wrote in), and OMH shapes structure and content only; OMH's record terms (surface, lane, wrapper, handoff, evidence boundary, not_observed) stay in records and tool calls, never in the sentence the user reads unless they ask about one; and when a stop condition or a decision the user owns ends the turn, offer the next action as a question rather than declaring what will not be done.

Use Hermes-native subagent/delegation features when available: native subagents -> Hermes delegation when available, otherwise sequential lanes.

Shared product, compatibility, topology, memory, harness, and execution rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md'). Load it when applicable; otherwise name an unavailable capability.