Pull the Cord

Definitions

To stop a rollout, launch, or operation abruptly when risk or damage becomes too high. In engineering slang, pulling the cord means deciding that continuing is more dangerous than pausing publicly.
In plain English: To abort or stop something quickly for safety reasons.
Example: "They pulled the cord on the migration as soon as validation errors spread outside the initial tenant cohort, which kept the blast radius small enough to recover cleanly."