[rbartoli]

This is steal (5) from the 2026-10-23 competitor check (internal note, Q3), and a distribution step: a new user can see the guard ask within a minute of installing it, without staging a burst.

/agent-guard simulate <rule> builds made-up state that trips the rule (core/simulate.ts) and runs the real gate on it, using your thresholds.

• Where someone can answer: the real question opens in Claude Code's dialog, prefixed Simulation, nothing changes:, and the reply says what you answered.
• Where nobody can answer, or the dialog fails: it prints the refusal Claude would read, or the reason a prompt would be held.
• Nothing is held, the session's state is untouched, the journal records nothing, and no usage is spent, because a command starts no model turn.
• Claude reads a command's reply with its next request, so every reply opens by saying it's a simulation and that none of it applies to the current work.

Rules: concurrency, starts, agent-tokens, burn, limit, limit-deny, depth, retry, tool-budget, prompt-context, dormant. With no rule, or an unknown one, it replies with the list.

The README's install step now ends with /agent-guard simulate concurrency, and the command list and help include it.

Test plan

• Core: every rule trips with the default config, asking where canAsk is true and refusing or holding where it's false; parsing, including a missing or unknown rule
• Mod: the dialog opens with the simulated question, the answer is reported, and the next real spawn is unaffected with an empty journal; headless prints the retry refusal and the held-prompt reason
• claude plugin test . on 2.1.310: 106 pass. With the code removed, both mod tests fail and the core file doesn't load.
• Live in the real UI (2.1.310, tmux, --plugin-dir with the installed copy switched off): /agent-guard simulate concurrency opened the dialog, and "Allow" printed the simulation reply. simulate retry printed the refusal. No model turn ran.
• claude plugin validate . --strict and tsc are clean
• CI is green