Hmbown Power Word Kill
End a process instantly. No negotiation, no cleanup, no save state.
Overview
Power Word Kill is interpreted here as a hybrid spell with a shipping-now execution model.
Canonical source: Power Word Kill (spell)
Provider target: OpenClaw
When To Use
- A process, service, or system must stop immediately and graceful shutdown is not available or has already failed.
- The cost of the system continuing to run exceeds the cost of abrupt termination and potential data loss.
- An emergency requires instant action — a runaway process, a security breach in progress, a cascading failure.
Workflow
- Confirm the target is correct. Power Word Kill has no undo.
- Verify that graceful alternatives (SIGTERM, drain, decommission) have been attempted or are not viable.
- Execute the hard kill: process termination, circuit breaker trip, account lock, or emergency shutdown.
- Immediately assess blast radius: what downstream systems were affected, what state was lost, what needs recovery.
- Document what happened and why the hard kill was necessary — this is your incident report seed.
Deliverables
- Confirmation that the target has been terminated.
- A blast-radius assessment: what was lost, what was affected, what needs recovery.
- An incident seed documenting the kill decision and its justification.
Guardrails
- Power Word Kill is for emergencies. If you have time to do a graceful shutdown, you have time to use a different spell.
- Never kill a process you do not own or have explicit authorization to terminate.
- Always document the kill. Unexplained hard terminations are how organizations lose trust in their own systems.
- If the target is a person's account or access, this requires human authorization — an AI should never unilaterally terminate a human's access.
Default Invocation
Use $power-word-kill to immediately terminate a process or system that cannot be shut down gracefully. Confirm the target, verify alternatives are exhausted, execute, and assess blast radius.