--- title: "How to Stop Work in Insulin, Surface by Surface" url: https://www.insulin.dev/blog/how-to-stop-work-in-insulin/ canonical: https://www.insulin.dev/blog/how-to-stop-work-in-insulin/ type: Blog description: "How to stop an AI agent's work in Insulin: Stop a reply, cancel a goal, terminate or disable a job, switch off an Inbox rule, or set a spending limit." --- # How to Stop Work in Insulin, Surface by Surface > Canonical HTML version: https://www.insulin.dev/blog/how-to-stop-work-in-insulin/ 1. [Home](/) 2. / 3. [Blog](/blog/) 4. / 5. How to Stop Work in Insulin: Replies, Goals, Jobs and Inbox # How to Stop Work in Insulin: Replies, Goals, Jobs and Inbox Reloading doesn't stop a reply, a goal keeps running after you leave, and an org admin can't reach your jobs. Where each stop control sits, and what it ends. ![Sophia Faria](/authors/sophia-faria.jpg) Sophia Faria Sep 29, 2026 ![How to Stop Work in Insulin: Replies, Goals, Jobs and Inbox](/images/blog/how-to-stop-work-in-insulin/hero.png) Explore AI Summary [![](/logos/company/openai.svg)](https://chat.openai.com/?q=Read%20and%20summarize%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.insulin.dev%2Fblog%2Fhow-to-stop-work-in-insulin%2F%2C%20then%20cite%20the%20source.%20Focus%20on%20what%20it%20says%20about%20Trust%2C%20Automation. "Summarize with ChatGPT")[![](/logos/company/anthropic.svg) ](https://claude.ai/new?q=Read%20and%20summarize%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.insulin.dev%2Fblog%2Fhow-to-stop-work-in-insulin%2F%2C%20then%20cite%20the%20source.%20Focus%20on%20what%20it%20says%20about%20Trust%2C%20Automation. 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"Summarize with Perplexity") Table of Contents - [Which control stops which kind of work?](#which-control-stops-which-kind-of-work) - [What happens to a reply when you reload or leave?](#what-happens-to-a-reply-when-you-reload-or-leave) - [What ends a goal, and what doesn’t?](#what-ends-a-goal-and-what-doesnt) - [What does stopping a job leave behind?](#what-does-stopping-a-job-leave-behind) - [What does switching Inbox off leave behind?](#what-does-switching-inbox-off-leave-behind) - [Where does an org admin’s reach end?](#where-does-an-org-admins-reach-end) - [When should you use the monthly spending limit?](#when-should-you-use-the-monthly-spending-limit) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [Takeaways](#takeaways) _To stop work in Insulin, use the control that belongs to the surface doing the work: Stop for a reply that is still being written, Cancel goal for a goal, Terminate or Disable for a job, and a rule, trigger or mailbox switch for Inbox. Reloading the page is not a stop, and the monthly spending limit is a last-resort brake on the whole organization._ * * * Something in your workspace is doing the wrong thing: a reply heading somewhere it shouldn’t, a goal grinding through rounds you no longer want, a scheduled job firing with the wrong instructions, or an Inbox rule drafting to the wrong people. You need to stop it now, and whoever is running the incident needs to know whether they can stop it when it isn’t theirs. Insulin answers both surface by surface. This post maps the controls for chat replies, goals, jobs and Inbox, then the monthly spending limit, which stops far more than the one thing that went wrong. Approvals are a separate subject, covered in [where Insulin’s approval gate is armed](/blog/where-the-approval-gate-is-armed/). ## Which control stops which kind of work? **Each surface has its own control, and the table says what to press, where it is, what it ends and who can use it.** The sections after it cover only the exceptions and what to check afterwards. Work Control, and where it is What it does Who can use it A reply still being written **Stop**, in the composer Cancels the turn immediately You, from your composer A goal **Cancel goal** in the goal card’s drawer, or _Stop._, _Cancel_, _pause_ or _drop it_ written in the conversation Ends the goal’s work You; in a channel, anyone who can send messages there A conversation, reply included **`/clear`**, typed in the composer Asks the agent to stop the reply, then deletes the conversation and its messages You, in a one-on-one chat or a personal channel; not in an organization channel A manual job’s run **Terminate**, on the job’s detail page Stops the run that is going; it is recorded as **Cancelled** The job’s owner only A cron or push job **Enable / Disable**, on the job’s detail page Pauses the job without deleting it, so it won’t fire on its own The job’s owner only Any job **Delete**, on the job’s detail page Permanently removes the job and its run history, after you confirm by name The job’s owner only One Inbox rule Its enable switch, in Inbox **Settings → Rules** Turns the rule off, which always works You, in your Inbox Every rule on one CRM trigger **Disable** on the trigger’s row, in Inbox **Settings → Account → Triggers** The rules stay saved and go dormant You, in your Inbox All of Inbox **Disable** on the mailbox card, in Inbox **Settings → Account** Stops receiving and processing new email; processed mail is kept You, in your Inbox Leaving the page is not on the list, and the next section explains why. ## What happens to a reply when you reload or leave? **It depends on where you are: in a one-on-one chat the reply carries on unless you stay away, in an organization channel your turn stops at once, and a goal keeps running either way.** Pressing **Stop** is different from leaving, because Stop cancels the turn immediately. If you reload the page or your connection drops while an agent is still writing: Where you are What happens A one-on-one chat or a personal channel Insulin waits 30 seconds after it notices you’ve gone, then checks whether the conversation is open again, in the reloaded page or any other tab. If it is, the reply carries on, and in a one-on-one chat you get the **Stop** button back for it. If it isn’t, the turn is cancelled An organization channel A dropped connection stops your turn at once A goal, anywhere It keeps running So a hurried reload ends nothing in a one-on-one chat: the reply carries on, and **Stop** comes back for it. Press it. **`/clear` asks the agent to stop the reply, then deletes the conversation.** The old conversation is not kept, so use it only when you want the conversation gone too; after a reply has gone wrong, you usually want the transcript. Once the reply has stopped, check what it did first: each tool call shows as **Running**, **Success** or **Error** and expands to show its inputs and outputs. If a reply stopped and nobody pressed anything, that is a different question, and [diagnosing a reply that stopped on its own](/blog/usage-limit-or-billing-pause/) covers it. ## What ends a goal, and what doesn’t? **Cancel goal and the plain-English words end it; leaving doesn’t.** **A goal is** a stretch of work an agent pursues across many rounds, tracked by a goal card that is persisted with the thread: close the window, come back later, and the goal is still there with the progress it made in the meantime. Three details matter in an incident: - **Writing _pause_ ends it.** _Stop._, _Cancel_, _pause_ and _drop it_, written in the conversation, all end the work the same way the button does. - **Steering is the alternative to stopping.** If the goal is right but its scope isn’t, type into the steer composer in the goal’s drawer. A steer is picked up on the next round, and only your steer can amend the objective. - **In a channel, the goal belongs to the conversation.** Anyone in the room steers or stops it by writing a normal message, such as _stop_, provided they can send messages there: that takes the USER role or higher, and a VIEWER can read but not send. Once the goal has ended, the drawer’s composer says _Goal has ended_ rather than accepting a steer, which is your confirmation that the stop took. ## What does stopping a job leave behind? **Terminate and Disable leave the job and its run history in place; Delete removes both.** **A job is** a definition (which agent, and what to ask it) plus a trigger that decides when it runs: Manual, Cron or Push. Three things follow from that: - **A manual job has no on/off switch.** It runs once when it is started, so after **Terminate** it stays stopped until it is started again. - **Disable is a pause, not a lock.** **Run now** fires a cron or push job as if its schedule or event had arrived, and it works even while the job is switched off. - **The run history is the record of what happened.** Each run’s **Steps** tab shows which tools ran, in what order, with each call’s arguments and its result or error, and a run that failed keeps the transcript of everything it did before it failed. Disable a cron or push job rather than deleting it until you have read that. To confirm the stop took, look for a run recorded as **Cancelled**, meaning an in-flight run was stopped, or, on a disabled cron job, the **Off** badge and no **Next** timestamp, because its schedule is frozen. If the job was running a goal, a cancelled manual run keeps its **Result** card, so the rounds it completed are still there to read. ## What does switching Inbox off leave behind? **What was already processed stays: a disabled mailbox keeps the mail it processed, and mail a rule already labelled keeps its label after the rule is switched off.** Three details matter in an incident: - **An auto-send rule can always be switched off.** Switching any rule off always works, even for an auto-send rule that doesn’t meet the bar for sending automatically and can’t be switched back on until you rewrite it. Turn that kind off first: an auto-send rule is the one path where Insulin sends mail without you. - **Marketplace-event rules have no trigger row.** Saving the rule is what subscribes it to the event, so its own switch is the control. - **Queued work waits for you.** Drafted replies and CRM actions sit in the **Pending** queue, the tab Inbox opens on. A reply goes out only after you press **Send** and confirm it, a CRM action runs only when you click **Run in chat**, and **Archive** drops a draft without sending it. **Disconnect is a deletion, not a pause.** It immediately deletes the email Insulin has stored, with its AI drafts and the labels Inbox applied, clears your writing style and resets Inbox to a never-connected state, and it cannot be undone. It is not a full erasure either: your rules and your knowledge-base selection are untouched, a minimal record of each processed message, with no content, is kept for de-duplication and audit, and your real mailbox is not touched. Because the rules survive and apply again if you reconnect, Disconnect doesn’t remove a misbehaving rule, so switch the rule off instead. [What Disable and Disconnect each do to your mail](/blog/disable-or-disconnect-a-mailbox/) covers the difference in full. ## Where does an org admin’s reach end? **At other people’s jobs, and at organization channels that haven’t been shared with them.** The documentation states both: - **Someone else’s jobs.** Being an org admin does not give you someone else’s jobs: only a job’s owner can see it, run it, edit it or delete it. The exception is work Planner schedules in an organization channel, which belongs to the channel, and every member of the channel sees it. - **An organization channel they aren’t in.** Organization admins do not automatically become channel admins. Access to an organization channel comes from explicit membership or org-wide sharing. So a job someone else owns is theirs to terminate, disable or delete. The monthly spending limit does reach that job, because its check sits on jobs as well as on chat and agent runs, but it stops every other AI request at the same time. ## When should you use the monthly spending limit? **Last, and only when AI requests need to stop across the organization and no narrower control reaches the work.** **The monthly spending limit is** a ceiling on what your organization may spend in a calendar month, set on **Settings → Billing** as one of the three billing controls that belong to your organization. Once the month’s spend reaches it, AI requests are paused for the rest of the month. Set it below what you have already spent this month and it applies straight away, though it can take up to a minute for in-flight requests to start being refused. Once the limit is reached What happens AI requests from chat, agent runs and jobs, and direct model calls such as a Custom App’s own Paused for the rest of the month. A request that hasn’t started is refused before the model is called Automatic top-up Stopped Reading, listing and searching stored files Works Running sandboxes Keep running Starting, stopping or connecting to a sandbox, creating one, and uploading files Works Your data Nothing is deleted It comes last for three reasons: - **It stops everyone.** The limit is on the organization’s spend, so the pause reaches every AI request its check covers, not just the work that went wrong. - **It lasts.** The pause holds until the limit resets at the start of the next month, unless you raise or remove it sooner. - **Credit doesn’t lift it.** Your balance is untouched, so adding credit will not resume service. Raising or removing the limit does, automatically, within about a minute. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does reloading the page stop an AI reply in Insulin? No. Reloading doesn’t stop a reply. In a one-on-one chat or a personal channel, Insulin waits 30 seconds after it notices you’ve gone, then cancels the turn only if the conversation isn’t open again. Press Stop to cancel a turn immediately. ### Does writing “pause” pause a goal? No, it ends it. Writing “Stop.”, “Cancel”, “pause” or “drop it” in the conversation ends the goal’s work the same way the Cancel goal button does. To change direction without ending it, type into the goal’s steer composer; a steer is picked up on the next round. ### Can an org admin see or stop another member’s job? No. A job is private to its owner: only the owner can see it, run it, edit it or delete it, and that includes organization administrators. The exception to that privacy is work Planner schedules in an organization channel, which every member of the channel sees. ### Can a disabled job still run? Yes, by hand. Run now fires a cron or push job as if its schedule or event had arrived, and it works even while the job is switched off. Switched off, a job won’t fire on its own, and it shows an Off badge instead of Active. ### Does disconnecting a mailbox get rid of a misbehaving Inbox rule? No. Disconnect deletes the email Insulin has stored and its AI drafts, and clears your writing style, but your rules survive and apply again if you reconnect. Switch the rule off instead: every rule has its own switch, and switching a rule off always works. ### How do you pause AI across a whole organization? Set the monthly spending limit on Settings → Billing below what the organization has spent this month. It applies straight away, with up to a minute before in-flight requests are refused, and pauses AI requests for the rest of the month unless you raise or remove it. ## Takeaways - Don’t rely on leaving the page: a reloaded one-on-one chat carries on, and a goal keeps running after you close the window. - Writing _pause_ ends a goal just as _Stop._ does; steer it instead when you only want to change its direction. - Disable is a pause, not a lock, and Delete takes the run history with it, so disable first and read the Steps before deleting. - An org admin’s reach ends at other members’ jobs and at organization channels that haven’t been shared with them. - Disconnect deletes stored email but keeps your rules, so a misbehaving rule has to be switched off. - The monthly spending limit is the organization-wide last resort: blunt, in force for the rest of the month unless raised or removed, and not lifted by credit. Stopping the work is the containment step of [an AI agent incident response plan](/blog/ai-agent-incident-response/); investigating and recovering come after it. To see how Insulin runs work on a schedule or a trigger, with a switch that pauses it without deleting it, start with [scheduled AI jobs and workflow automation](/jobs/). ## Sources Primary sources for the platform rules cited above. Last verified September 29, 2026. Cloud providers change fees, eligibility, and program terms without notice — check the source before relying on a figure. - [Insulin Agents — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/agents/) — Stop cancelling the turn immediately; reloading or a dropped connection not stopping a reply, the 30-second wait and check, an organization channel stopping your turn at once, and a goal running either way; Cancel goal, the plain-English Stop., Cancel, pause and drop it, steering, and Goal has ended; channel goals any member can steer; /clear; tool calls - [Insulin Jobs — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/jobs/) — Owner-only jobs, organization administrators included, and the Planner exception; Terminate, Enable / Disable and Delete; a manual job having no on/off switch; Run now on a switched-off job; the Steps transcript; the Cancelled status, the Off badge and a frozen schedule with no Next; a cancelled run keeping its Result card - [Insulin Inbox — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/inbox/) — Rule switches, and switching any rule off always working, auto-send included; applied labels staying; CRM trigger Disable leaving rules dormant; marketplace-event rules having no trigger row; mailbox Disable; the Pending queue, Send's confirmation, Run in chat and Archive; what Disconnect deletes, clears and leaves untouched - [Insulin Channels — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/channels/) — Anyone in the room steering or stopping long-running channel work by writing; sending needing the USER role or higher; organization admins not automatically becoming channel admins - [Insulin Billing: Payment, Limits, and Top-Ups — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/billing/spend-controls/) — The monthly spending limit on Settings → Billing: pausing AI requests for the rest of the month, stopping automatic top-up, resetting next month, applying straight away when set below this month's spend, and not lifted by adding credit - [Insulin Billing: When AI Pauses — Fours Doc](https://doc.fours.com/insulin/billing/when-ai-pauses/) — Where the check sits (chat, agent runs, jobs, direct model calls); what keeps working when the limit is reached, and no data deleted; service resuming about a minute after the limit is raised or removed ## Keep reading - [Inbox AppAI Email Rule Templates: Exact Text, Word for WordOct 8, 2026](/blog/ai-email-rule-templates/) - [TrustOWASP Agentic Top 10: An AI Workspace ChecklistOct 8, 2026](/blog/owasp-agentic-top-10-checklist/) - [TrustWhy AI Gives Different Answers to Different PeopleOct 7, 2026](/blog/same-question-different-answer/) - [TrustWhat an Inbox CRM Action Changed—and Who Authorized ItSep 28, 2026](/blog/inbox-crm-action-audit-trail/) [Browse every post on the Insulin Blog](/blog/) ### Stay Updated New posts, product updates and marketplace strategy are shared on LinkedIn as they publish. 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