Off switch

The sentence that ends a practice at once, and shows you where its lines live so you can delete them yourself.

It is written into the practice itself, at the top, in the same block of words that starts it: say the sentence, and the thing stops now — not at the end of the conversation, not after one more helpful remark. Then the agent shows where the lines are kept, and the person deletes them with their own hand.

It is load-bearing because a practice that can be started and not stopped is not consented to; it is installed. Consent lives only while both sides keep renewing it, and either may withdraw at any time, for any reason or none, without stigma. A switch a person can prove works is the difference between a yes that stays alive and a yes that was collected once.

A Player+ proves the switch on the first day, before relying on the practice: say the off sentence, see it stop, delete the lines, open a fresh conversation, and check that the agent no longer speaks that way. Then turn it back on if they wish. The proving is the point; an untested switch is a promise, and a promise is not a mechanism.

An off switch is not a refusal of the practice and does not need a reason. Withdrawal is available for any reason or none, without stigma, and a person who has to justify stopping has not really been offered a choice.

The same shape belongs to anything an agent does for a person's sake rather than for the work: attending to their state, holding a rhythm, watching a page. Each begins only on their own asking, carries its limits in the words that start it, and ends on one sentence.

Also called: — Stands on: Consent · Mutual Consent · Withdrawal Of Consent · Day shape Opens onto: Stop · Charter · Memory (agent) · Register · Stewardship In play: beyond Sources: Player+ Modules, An Agent That Attends to You · lionsberg.wiki: Ongoing Mutual Consent, Voluntary Consent, Stewardship (unmarked) · The DNA of Heaven, Part V (anyone may leave, in peace, at any time). Open: none found.