---
title: Shortcircuit
url: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins/shortcircuit'
markdown: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins/shortcircuit.md'
date: '2026-09-22'
description: 'This pulgin is recommended for advanced administrators only. This plugin implements simple, test-based shortcircuiting. Shortcircuiting a test will force all other pending rules to be skipped, if that test is hit (saving on CPU usage). In addition, a symbolic rule, SHORTCIRCUIT, will fire…'
taxonomy:
  category:
    - docs
  tag:
    - shortcircuit
---

[](#)  [ Basics ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/)     [ User Guide ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide)     [ Anti-spam Plugins ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins)      Shortcircuit    

# Shortcircuit

> > > > > This pulgin is recommended for advanced administrators only.

This plugin implements simple, test-based shortcircuiting. Shortcircuiting a test will force all other pending rules to be skipped, if that test is hit (saving on CPU usage). In addition, a symbolic rule, SHORTCIRCUIT, will fire. Recommended usage is to use priority to set rules with strong S/O values (ie. 1.0) to be run first, and make instant spam or ham classification based on that.

To override a test that uses shortcircuiting, you can set the classification type to off. Note that DNS and other network lookups are launched when SA reaches priority -100. If you want to shortcircuit scanning before any network queries are sent, you need to set lower than -100 priority to any such rule, like -200 as in the examples below. Shortcircuited test will be automatically set to priority -200, but only if the original priority is unchanged at default 0.

## Format

```
SYMBOLIC_TEST_NAME {spam|ham|on|off}
```

`spam` - Shortcircuit the rule using a set of defaults; override the default score of this rule with the score from shortcircuit\_spam\_score, set the noautolearn tflag, and set priority to -200.
`ham` - Shortcircuit the rule using a set of defaults; override the default score of this rule with the score from shortcircuit\_ham\_score, set the noautolearn and nice tflags, and set priority to -200.
`on` - Shortcircuits the rest of the tests, but does not make a strict classification of spam or ham. Rather, it uses the default score for the rule being shortcircuited.
`off` - Disables shortcircuiting on said rule.

## Examples

If you have taken the time to correctly specify your `Warden -> Settings -> Anti-spam Settings -> Network Settings -> Trusted networks` you could shortcircuit the `ALL_TRUSTED` rule so that mail from the `trusted_networks` is shortcircuited. Go to `Warden -> Settings -> Plugin Settings ->  Shortcircuit` and set Shortcircuit to:

```
ALL_TRUSTED on
```

If you have a very well well-trained accurate Bayes database you could shortcircuit the `BAYES_99` rule or `BAYES_00` so that mail that bayes thought was spam or ham is shortcircuited. Go to `Warden -> Settings -> Plugin Settings ->  Shortcircuit` and set Shortcircuit to:

```
BAYES_99 spam
BAYES_00 ham
```

## Tags

```
_SC_      shortcircuit status (classification and rule name)
_SCRULE_  rulename that caused the shortcircuit 
_SCTYPE_  shortcircuit classification ("spam", "ham", "default", "none")
```

## Related Pages

- [Shortcircuit Settings](https://docs.danami.com/warden/settings/antispam/plugin-settings/shortcircuit "Shortcircuit Settings")

 [](https://docs.danami.com/warden/command-line-interface/antispam/antispam-plugin-shortcircuit)

---

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