Break-Glass
Break-glass is an emergency procedure that temporarily bypasses the shield. Use it only when the LiteLLM proxy is down and your agents need to keep working.
⚠️
When break-glass is active, no traffic is scanned. Any prompt — including malicious ones — goes straight through to the model. This is a last resort.
When to Use
- LiteLLM crashed and the watchdog cannot restart it
- A critical business process depends on agent availability
- You are in a client demo and cannot afford downtime
Activation Flow
Go to Configuration
Navigate to the Configuration panel and scroll to the Break-Glass Mode card.
Click BREAK-GLASS
A confirmation dialog opens.
Fill in the dialog
- Enter a reason (minimum 10 characters)
- Select a duration (15 minutes to 4 hours maximum)
- Type CONFIRM (case-sensitive)
- Click Activate Break-Glass
What Happens When Active
- A red warning banner appears at the top of every panel with a countdown timer
- A CRITICAL alert is generated
- All LLM traffic bypasses the shield entirely
- Traffic is still logged with verdict “BYPASSED”
- The audit trail records the activation with your reason
Deactivation
Break-glass ends in one of two ways:
- Timer expires — automatically reverts to normal operation
- Click “Deactivate Now” on the banner — manually ends it early
After deactivation, there is a 15-minute cool-down before you can activate again. This prevents rapid on/off toggling.
Post-Break-Glass Review
After break-glass ends:
- Note the unscanned traffic count from the deactivation alert
- Wait for the Session Watcher to process sessions from the bypass window
- Filter Traffic Monitor by SOURCE = session-watcher for the bypass time range
- Review any BLOCK or REVIEW verdicts found retroactively
- Document the incident in your security log
Security Controls
| Control | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Requires stated reason | Minimum 10 characters, stored in audit log |
| Requires explicit confirmation | Must type “CONFIRM” (case-sensitive) |
| Time-limited | Maximum 4 hours, auto-expires |
| Cool-down period | 15 minutes between activations |
| CRITICAL alert | Generated on every activation |
| Traffic tracking | All bypass traffic logged with source=“break-glass” |
| Retroactive scanning | Session Watcher scans bypass-period logs after the fact |