Owner recovery

A terminal, owner-signed break-glass operation to withdraw a vault's funds, independent of any hosted workflow.

Owner recovery is a terminal break-glass covenant operation that lets the vault owner withdraw the vault's funds entirely, using only the owner's own signature — independent of any agent, approver, governance ceremony, or hosted platform availability.

#Why it exists, and why it is deliberately simple

Delegated spending authority (agents, approvers, thresholds) exists to let an owner distribute day-to-day spending without distributing ultimate control. Recovery is the guarantee that ultimate control never actually leaves the owner: no matter what policy is configured, how many agents exist, or whether the hosted PolicyVault server is available at all, the owner can always reclaim the vault's funds with their own key.

This is why recovery carries no dependency on the hosted platform: it is never gated by governance, by risk-review holds, or by anything short of the owner's signature and Kaspa consensus itself.

#What recovery does

Recovery is terminal: once performed, the vault reaches a closed state and is no longer available for further covenant operations. It is the appropriate response to a confirmed compromise, a decision to stop using a particular vault, or any situation where you want funds fully back under a single, unconstrained owner key rather than under a delegated policy.

#Recovery is not the same as pause

Pause is reversible and keeps the vault's policy and balance intact while stopping new agent spends. Recovery is not reversible for that vault — it ends the vault's covenant lifecycle and returns the funds to the owner. If you only need to stop activity temporarily, pause first; recovery is the last resort or the deliberate final step of retiring a vault.

#Recovery requires only the owner key

No agent key, no approver signature, and no PolicyVault server state is needed to perform recovery — only the owner's own signature over the recovery operation, verified by Kaspa consensus exactly like any other covenant transition.

See also: Recover a vault for the how-to, Recovery questions for common questions.