The kill switch is one toggle that pauses all AI actions immediately — no outreach, no follow-ups, no automated replies — until you turn it back on. It's your emergency stop, and it's always available.
The effect is immediate. A red banner confirms: "AI automations are currently paused. No outreach emails will be sent until you resume."
If any cold campaign can't be paused (for example, the managed infrastructure is briefly unreachable), the UI tells you explicitly — with a count of campaigns that may still be sending and a Retry button. You are never shown a clean "paused" state that isn't true.
The kill switch stops the AI acting on your behalf. It does not lock you out:
Flip the toggle back to Automations running. PlacementFlow-side automation resumes immediately.
One deliberate exception: cold campaigns do not auto-resume. You resume each campaign individually from the Campaigns view. This is intentional — after an emergency stop, you should consciously decide which cold outreach goes back out, not have everything blast off at once.
There's no penalty for using it. Pausing doesn't delete anything — your campaigns, sequences, and data are all intact, ready for you to resume when you're confident.