How do I install the Freeze skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add darkroomengineering/freeze in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

What does the Freeze skill do?

Block Edit and Write outside one directory for the session to contain debugging or parallel agents. Triggers "freeze edits", "restrict edits to", "only edit this folder", "unfreeze". It is listed under Coding & Dev Tools on SkillMD.

Is Freeze safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Freeze?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Freeze free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free, and the skill stays under its author's original license.

Who published Freeze?

darkroomengineering (@darkroomengineering) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Freeze by darkroomengineering — Agent Skill

Name: Freeze
Author: darkroomengineering

File contents

Freeze: Lock Edits to a Directory

Standalone Codex: unsupported

Stop here in standalone Codex. The plugin does not install a freeze guard for apply_patch, so this skill cannot enforce an edit boundary. Do not write freeze state or claim a directory is locked. Tell the user the operation is unsupported and use explicit file ownership as a convention only if they want to continue without enforcement.

The remaining workflow is Claude-only.

Restrict Edit and Write to a single directory. Any edit targeting a file outside the boundary is blocked by the freeze-guard PreToolUse hook. State persists per session in ~/.claude/tmp/freeze-<sha256(sessionId)>.json; setting, checking, or clearing one session's boundary leaves other sessions untouched. Legacy freeze.json state without a session tag is still honored when no session record exists. Legacy state tagged to another session is ignored without deleting it.

Note: notebook edits (NotebookEdit) and shell writes (Bash) are not gated — the boundary covers the file-editing tools only.

Set the boundary

If the user named a directory, use it. Otherwise ask which directory to lock to (AskUserQuestion, free-text path). Then run, substituting the chosen path for PATH:

bun ~/.claude/src/scripts/freeze.ts set "PATH"

Confirm to the user that edits are now restricted to that path, and that they can lift it any time with "unfreeze".

Lift the boundary

bun ~/.claude/src/scripts/freeze.ts off

Check current state

bun ~/.claude/src/scripts/freeze.ts status

Frequently asked questions

Freeze