# Guard

Something that stops a kind of failure before it reaches the end of an unattended run.

A guard is a check, a rule or a way of working that makes a failure kind impossible or visible. The guards in this map are short checked segments, read-only tests, holdout scenarios, a stop option, a near-perfect verifier, asking when underspecified, fresh starts, descriptive tool names, and leaving out repository overviews.

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Published 2026-10-29. Web page: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/reference/ontology/unattended-agent-failures/guard