chameleon-disable

/chameleon-disable

Disable chameleon's advisory injections for the current session. Hook stack still fires but no <chameleon-context> content is injected.

When to use

• User runs /chameleon-disable explicitly
• User expresses frustration with chameleon's latency or pattern advice (the callout-detector hook surfaces this command on detected frustration)
• User is doing experimental / one-off work where conformance pressure is unwelcome

Opt-out hierarchy

Most-permanent →    .chameleon/.skip (per-repo, all users, committed → team-wide)
                ↓   CHAMELEON_DISABLE=1   (per-user globally; in shell rc)
                ↓   /chameleon-disable    (this session only)
                ↓   /chameleon-pause-15m  (next 15 minutes)
Most-temporary

Use the most-temporary option that solves the immediate need. Revert by:

• /chameleon-disable → starts new Claude Code session
• /chameleon-pause-15m → expires automatically
• CHAMELEON_DISABLE=1 → unset the env var
• .chameleon/.skip → remove the file from the repo

Prerequisites

disable_session requires a trust grant. If the repo has no .trust record, the tool returns status: failed with a message to run /chameleon-trust first.

The flow

1. Confirm chameleon is currently active in this session.
2. Call chameleon-mcp::disable_session(repo=<repo_root>, session_id=<current session_id>).
   • If the tool returns session_unknown_to_chameleon: true, it means this session has never invoked another chameleon tool. Retry with force=True if the user explicitly asked for disable.
3. The PreToolUse hook checks for the resulting .session_disabled.<sha256(session_id)[:16]> marker before injecting; if present, skips.
4. Confirm to user: "chameleon disabled for this session. SessionStart primer will re-enable on next session unless you set CHAMELEON_DISABLE=1 globally or .chameleon/.skip in this repo."

Don't suggest disable for the wrong problem

• Pattern advice is wrong → use /chameleon-teach instead
• Latency is too high → run /chameleon-doctor to check health
• One archetype's canonical is bad → edit .chameleon/canonicals.json directly OR use /chameleon-refresh
• Profile drift is causing churn → /chameleon-refresh

Disable is the escape hatch for situations where chameleon legitimately isn't useful in the moment, not a tool for fixing other problems.