Skip to main content
The execution layer is still being built, so nothing below runs yet. It describes the contract the errands are being built against, which is fixed.

​
Ask, in whatever conversation you are in

Tell your assistant to cancel the task — by id, or by describing it if there is only one in flight. Your assistant calls Hence, and the task stops. You can also simply decline. Any question Hence asks can be answered no, and an errand that cannot proceed without an answer ends rather than working around you.

​
What cancelling guarantees

Cancellation is cooperative: Hence stops at the next safe point rather than being killed mid-step. In practice that is quick, and it is what keeps a half-submitted form from existing. What it guarantees:
  • No further act is taken on your behalf. No message is sent, no setting is changed, no form is submitted after the cancellation lands.
  • The task ends in cancelled, a terminal state of its own, carrying what had been done up to that point and what had not. It is deliberately not reported as DONE or READY: neither would be true of an errand you stopped.
  • Receipts for what already happened stay. They are the record of acts that did occur.

​
What it does not do

Cancelling stops future acts. It does not reverse acts already taken — that is what the reversibility limits are for, rather than something cancellation could offer. If a deferral rate was already changed on your approval, cancelling the task does not change it back; changing it back is its own errand, and it is one step in the same portal. This is also why errands that do irreversible things are not in the current set. The 401(k) rollover stops at the review page precisely so that “stop” is always a real option.

​
Disconnecting your assistant

Removing the connector in your host stops it calling Hence at all. That is the blunt instrument, and it works immediately.
Disconnecting does not yet purge your data or cancel runs already in flight. That behaviour is committed and is not implemented yet. Until it is, cancel a task explicitly if you want it stopped, and see Trust and control for how to ask for erasure.