Run with every write disabled

Run the whole stack against your real league without changing anything on ESPN. Do this until you trust what the bots would do. There is no single global switch: each write path has its own gate, and they don't all default to safe.

Two writes are live by default

• The lineup bot writes when DRY_RUN is unset.
• A waiver claim you confirm in the UI goes live unless you tick Dry run in the confirm dialog. The UI sends dry_run: false, which overrides the worker's DRY_RUN.

Only the browser worker writes to ESPN. Core decides what to do and queues it; the worker carries it out.

Checklist

Where	Setting	Effect
Worker	DRY_RUN=true	Every bot logs and records what it would have sent instead of sending it. dev/local.env sets it.
Worker	TRADE_DRY_RUN=true	Trade submissions dry-run too. Production sets TRADE_DRY_RUN=false, so check any manifest you copy.
Worker	TRADE_SUBMIT_ENABLED and TRADE_RESPONSE_ENABLED unset	Trade sends and responses stay locked even if a dry-run setting is wrong.
Core	AUTO_PUBLISH_IR_MOVES unset or false	The waiver evaluator never queues an IR stash move on its own.
Core	Run python -m src.optimization.lineup_solver --dry-run	It computes and logs the swaps without calling the lineup trigger.
Core	Don't run waiver_evaluator by hand	It has no dry-run flag; it queues claims for the worker to carry out.
Core, on Kubernetes	Pause the lineup optimizer, waiver trigger and rumor action trigger	They stop queueing moves on schedule. See below.
Draft	Turn off auto-publish	POST /v1/draft/auto-publish with {"league_id": "<league>", "enabled": false}, or the toggle in the UI. The listener only recommends.
UI	Tick Dry run when you confirm a waiver claim	Without it, the claim goes live.
UI	Don't approve outgoing trade offers or answer incoming ones	No trade write runs without an approval, whatever the flags say.

For what each gate checks and why, see Safety model.

How do I keep the worker from running at all?

Don't start it. Core still runs: ingestion, projections, the optimizers and the UI all work, and actions wait in RabbitMQ.

Queued actions run as soon as a worker starts. Purge the queues first:

for q in lineup_updates waiver_actions draft_targets trade_submissions trade_responses; do
  docker compose -f fantasy-project/dev/compose.yaml exec rabbitmq rabbitmqctl purge_queue "$q"
done

sync_players publishes injury alerts to waiver_actions every time it runs, so expect messages there.

How do I pause the jobs that act?

Three scheduled jobs queue ESPN changes: the lineup optimizer, the waiver trigger and the rumor action trigger. How you pause them depends on what schedules them.

Scheduler	Pause	Resume
CronJobs, as fantasy-infra deploys today	kubectl patch cronjob <name> -p '{"spec":{"suspend":true}}' for fantasy-lineup-optimizer, fantasy-weekly-waiver-trigger and fantasy-rumor-action-trigger	The same patch with false
The core job launcher, which replaces the CronJobs	PUT /v1/jobs/<name>/pause for lineup-optimizer, waiver-trigger and rumor-action-trigger, the catalog jobs marked acts: true	DELETE /v1/jobs/<name>/pause

A launcher pause with no until lasts until you remove it:

for job in lineup-optimizer waiver-trigger rumor-action-trigger; do
  curl -X PUT "$CORE_API_BASE_URL/v1/jobs/$job/pause" \
    -H "X-API-Key: $TRIGGER_API_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d '{"reason": "dry run while evaluating"}'
done

A manual launcher run with downstream set ignores pauses on the steps after it.

Verify

Check	Expect
Lineup bot log	Starting realignment … [DRY_RUN]. If it logs DRY_RUN is unset, defaulting to FALSE, it is live.
Waiver claim from the UI	The confirmation reads Dry run queued. Nothing will be submitted to ESPN.
Trade offers	They end in dry_run_filled or submit_blocked, never submitted.

When you're ready to go live

Open one gate at a time, in this order, and watch the result on ESPN after each:

1. Lineup: set DRY_RUN=false, or leave it unset on Kubernetes.
2. Waivers: confirm a claim in the UI with Dry run unticked.
3. Trades: set TRADE_DRY_RUN=false and TRADE_SUBMIT_ENABLED=true, then approve a single offer.

Trade responses and unattended IR moves have extra verified-path gates. See Which flags gate live behavior? and Unattended IR publication.