# Upgrade Guide — vNEXT

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## What Changed

The MessageSentinel's LLM layer now downgrades a 'pause' classification to normal pass-through when the message exceeds 25 words (MAX_PAUSE_DIRECTIVE_WORDS). Emergency-stop is deliberately not length-gated (safety asymmetry). The downgrade is logged and carried in the classification reason.

## What to Tell Your User

Long working messages that happen to end with phrases like "stand by" or "hold off for now" can no longer be swallowed as pause commands. Previously such a message could pause your agent's session and vanish entirely — you'd see only "Session paused" where your instructions should have landed. Short, genuine pause directives still pause as before.

## Summary of New Capabilities

- Pause classifications on messages over 25 words pass through as normal conversation; the message is delivered instead of consumed.

## Evidence

Live failures (2026-06-05, topic 1052): two ~200-word mentor coaching messages ending "…and stand by" were LLM-classified 'pause' and CONSUMED by the telegram-forward sentinel intercept — "Session paused" posted at 14:22:58Z and 14:41:24Z, the messages never routed, present in no queue or drop ledger (the third mechanism of the day's delivery-loss trilogy, after #839 inbound replay and #840 outbound purge). The classifier prompt already instructs "substantive content ⇒ NORMAL" but the closing imperative intermittently won — prompt-as-willpower; this guard is the structure. Pinned by 4 tests: long-pause downgrade, short-pause preserved, long emergency-stop preserved, exact 25/26-word boundary.
