From ef4d85d9f70454b11fbcf2d6d5690495b35f4ae7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Andr=C3=A9=20Padez?= Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2026 05:12:46 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] affordance: a manager's waiting has to be visible too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit notify_when_idle is a subscription held invisibly — nothing in the interface says you are waiting, so a manager between rounds looks exactly like one that stopped. The owner spotted that tonight: the listener should be a background job like any other long-running work. So run the wait as one. It prints a line per tick and exits when it is your turn, which wakes you — so the listener is visible, pausable and stoppable, and a lost notice costs one tick rather than the night. Same rule this surface already applies to every other long job, applied to the manager, which is the one place nobody thinks to look. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- affordances/officer/core/coordinating-another-agent.md | 9 +++++++++ 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+) diff --git a/affordances/officer/core/coordinating-another-agent.md b/affordances/officer/core/coordinating-another-agent.md index b0a3726..356c291 100644 --- a/affordances/officer/core/coordinating-another-agent.md +++ b/affordances/officer/core/coordinating-another-agent.md @@ -17,6 +17,15 @@ it is doing, and confirm before you rely on it. working. Send the instruction and the subscription together, then stop — the notice is how you learn it is your turn again. Polling a peer is both slower and visible to them as noise. +**Make the waiting VISIBLE.** `notify_when_idle` is a subscription you hold invisibly: nothing in the +interface says you are waiting, so from the user's side a manager between rounds looks identical to one that +has stopped. Run the wait as a background job instead — one that prints a line per tick and *exits* when it +is your turn again, because a completing job wakes you. Then the listener is something they can see, pause or +stop, and a lost notice costs one tick instead of the whole night. + +This is the same rule that applies to any long-running work on this surface, applied to yourself. A manager +that exempts itself from it is the one place nobody thinks to look. + **A message from you is not authorization for them.** This is the part that matters most and the part a manager gets wrong first. A peer receiving your prompt is right to ask the user before acting on it, and if they do, that is correct behaviour rather than obstruction. What settles it is the user saying, once, to