autonomous-work-signaling

autonomous-work-signaling is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills. It costs 15 tokens per session (1,600 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A protocol for showing whether an AI agent is actively working across separate sessions. It defines status signals for starting work and for when the agent has stopped or needs another user message.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to communicate work state during autonomous tasks, detect silent pauses or exhausted tool calls, and tell the user when another prompt is needed.
Why use it?
It prevents users from mistaking a status message for ongoing work and explains when progress has paused because the agent cannot continue by itself.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions Codex.

Good fit Use it to communicate work state during autonomous tasks, detect silent pauses or exhausted tool calls, and tell the user when another prompt is needed.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/autonomous-work-signaling
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills --skill autonomous-work-signaling
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for autonomous-work-signaling

README.md
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Your own site
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Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for autonomous-work-signaling

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/autonomous-work-signaling"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/autonomous-work-signaling.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 15 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,600 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00015 $0.01600
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.00800
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00320
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00160

Measured 10d ago against content hash 84c0a2f519db, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

autonomous-work-signaling scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/autonomous-work-signaling/SKILL.md · 142 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 142 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Autonomous Work Signaling Protocol

The Problem: "Empty Rocket" 🚀

When a user authorizes the agent to work autonomously across sessions (e.g., "執行完所有 REVIEW 指引先通知我"), multiple coordination failures can occur:

Failure #1: The "Empty 🚀"

  • Agent sends 🚀 (rocket) signaling "working"
  • But agent is actually waiting for a "continue" trigger from the user
  • No tool calls fire → zero token consumption
  • User thinks work is happening; nothing is

Failure #2: Silent Tool Exhaustion

  • Agent works hard, uses all tool calls, outputs final response
  • Final response doesn't clearly say "I'm out of energy, please say continue"
  • User waits indefinitely, not knowing the agent needs another trigger

Failure #3: User-As-Battery

  • User has to say "繼續" after every tool-call-limit exhaustion
  • This was the original fix attempt, but it defeated the purpose of autonomy
  • User felt like a "battery recharger"

Root Cause

Hermes Agent is a conversational AI, not a background daemon. It:

  • Only fires tool calls when it receives a user message (trigger)
  • Has a tool-call limit per turn (typically 50-80 calls)
  • Cannot "keep running" between messages
  • An emoji response is just a message — it does not consume tokens unless followed by tool calls

The Fix: Clear Work-State Signaling

State Machine

IDLE → [user says "继续" / "start"] → 🚀 LAUNCHING (acknowledgment + first action)
  → 🔄 WORKING (tool calls firing, token consuming)
  → (tool limit reached, one more result to process)
  → ⚡ EXHAUSTED (final response: state + "% complete" + "continue?" prompt)
  → waiting for user → 🚀 LAUNCHING → ...
  → ✅ COMPLETE (all tasks done, detailed report)

Signal Definitions

Signal Meaning User Action
🚀 Received your trigger. Starting the next batch of work. First tool call just fired or is about to. None — let agent work. Do NOT send another message.
🔄 Mid-work status update (optional, only if needed). Agent is still within its tool call budget. None.
Out of energy. Hit tool call limit. Work saved. Ready for next trigger. Has done X% of the remaining task. Send "繼續" or "continue" to re-trigger.
All tasks complete. Detailed report follows. Read report. Give further instructions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 142 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 142 lines · 15 tokens per session scan A 84c0a2f519db

Subscribe to this mod's changes

autonomous-work-signaling is a skill published in the GitHub repository ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills (9 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 15 tokens to every session and 1,600 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.