Pause an agent when you need to stop activity — campaign halt, deliverability incident, team review. Pausing preserves all state; resuming picks up where it stopped. Soft pause vs hard stop have different semantics.
Soft pause (recommended)
Agents → [Agent] → Pause. The agent stops initiating new actions but completes in-flight sequences (sends scheduled within the next 24h still go out). In-progress conversations continue. Use this for short pauses — a day, a weekend, a holiday.
Hard stop
Agents → [Agent] → Hard Stop. The agent stops everything immediately — including in-flight sequences. Scheduled sends are cancelled. Use this for incidents (deliverability problem, brand voice problem, compliance issue) where you want to stop everything now.
Resuming
Agents → [Agent] → Resume. The agent restarts. Soft-paused agents resume immediately; hard-stopped agents review their state before resuming (any scheduled sends cancelled while stopped are not re-queued automatically).
Automatic pauses
Some conditions trigger automatic pauses: mailbox reputation drops below threshold, error rate exceeds 5%, or the suppression list is updated mid-run. The agent pauses itself, logs the reason, and notifies admins. Manual review is required to resume.