cli-kill.md

summary	Kill a running session's process.
read_when	Looking up kill
title	coven kill
description	Reference for coven kill: stop a running session's harness process through the daemon while keeping the session record and its event log.

Usage

coven kill <session-id>

Kill stops a running session's harness process. The daemon (which owns the process) performs the kill, marks the session killed, and records a kill event. The session record and its append-only event log are kept.

Behavior

coven kill only acts on running sessions. For anything else it refuses:

session `<session-id>` is not running (status: completed); only running sessions can be killed

After a kill, the session shows up as killed in coven sessions. Clean it up like any other finished session:

coven archive <session-id>
coven sacrifice <session-id> --yes

Stale "running" sessions

A session whose process died externally keeps status=running until daemon startup recovery marks it orphaned. If coven kill cannot reach a live process for the session, run:

coven daemon restart

then check coven sessions again.

Related

• Session lifecycle
• Sessions
• Attach
• Archive
• Sacrifice