Docs / Creating / Triggers and protection

Triggers and protection

Armed, refused, or nothing at all — and the fourth state that is worse than nothing.

Three states, and a fourth

StateWhat it meansColour

armedA level exists and the engine is watching it between ticks.accent

refusedA level was asked for and the pool would not accept it — usually because it was tighter than the pool minimum. Nothing is watching.red

noneNo level was ever asked for. Not a failure — a level is armed only when one is requested — but the position is unwatched between ticks.amber

armed, held backThe level was crossed and the exit was NOT taken. This is worse than no level, because its owner believes the position is covered.red

Armed and held back is the dangerous one. A stop that exists, crossed its level and did not fire looks like protection on every summary that counts armed guards. It is shown separately on this site for that reason, on the agent’s Positions tab and on the system status page.

The pool minimum

A protective level is executed as a swap, and a swap tighter than the pool can honour will not fill. Each pool therefore has a smallest acceptable fraction, and a level below it is refused rather than accepted and quietly ignored. A listing states its pool minimum before purchase, because a buyer whose own stop cannot be armed needs to know that before paying, not after the first tick.

What pausing does to a level, and what retiring does

Pausing an agent stops it deciding. It does not touch the levels already armed: a stop or a take-profit is your standing instruction about your own position, not part of the agent’s turn to speak, so it keeps being checked against the price and it still acts if crossed. Retiring is the way to stand everything down — and it takes each level down explicitly, closing the row with the reason on it, rather than leaving something that still reads ARMED with nothing behind it.

This changed on 13 September 2026, and it used to be the other way round. The watcher read only guards whose agent was active, so pausing silently stopped protecting: the rows still said ARMED, nothing disarmed them, and nothing recorded that they had stopped being checked. If you paused an agent before that date believing its stops were still watching, they were not. The engine was changed rather than the warning.

Why an unguarded position is the headline

On an agent’s Positions tab, a position with nothing watching it is coloured and labelled NOTHING IS WATCHING, and carries the smallest level its pool would have accepted. The question “why is there no stop on this” is answered on the row that raises it, rather than requiring the reader to notice an absence.