Is there functionality to pause the assistant so that a group of changes all get committed at once?

The case I'm thinking of is using git-annex to manage distribution of my bup backups. I want to make sure that all the backup files are written - and then the par2 files generated from fscking - before they are committed and shipped.

Naively, I'm looking for something as simple as a lockfile to touch at the start of the backup and then remove afterwards.

Of course I could just run git annex sync --content after the backup is run, but, I'm was thinking that the assistant might be more set and forget...

Does anyone do pausing or something similar?