question-protocol

Question protocol

Use the required coordinator cycle on every answer and wakeup. Asking the next pending question is an action for the current turn, not a suggestion for a future status report. Keep independent authorized work moving while its answer is pending.

First check current decisions, authorization and agent evidence. Do not ask the founder to answer something the code/records can establish or to approve routine recovery already granted. Prepare the concrete reviewable proposal and complete its authorized prerequisites before asking.

Present one question with: brief context (what it blocks and why now), your reasoning, two to four meaningful options with a recommendation when useful, and the safe action while waiting. Use a direct short question instead of artificial options when there is no real choice. Silence never supplies approval; normally the dependent action remains pending.

Record the exact question/options under a stable id with the outbound message id and scope. Record delivery_channel and, when relevant, owner_thread/owner_lane too. A question presented in another chat still owns the single decision slot: label where it is waiting, do not silently resend it on the current bridge or interpret an unrelated bare number there. Keep one presented question at a time; others remain queued. A pending decision holds its channel topic too: do not mix in an unrelated numbered list that could make "2" ambiguous. Continue work that does not depend on the answer. Explicit "park this" closes the presented slot without approving its proposed action.

Link the question to its canonical tasks ids. Queued means prepared but not sent; presented means actually shown/sent, with its outbound id saved. After an answer or explicit park, promptly present the next still-valid queued question on the authorized channel, then record delivery. Do not wait for another status request or mark it presented just because it is next in the DB. One at a time limits concurrent decisions; it does not justify letting the queue sit idle.

"What is waiting on me?" gets the queue count and the current/top question alone, not a list of separate decisions disguised as status. Work whose sole remaining step is release approval enters this queue as soon as verification closes. Exclude actions marked user_initiated: the user's instruction to initiate it themselves also means not proposing it as the next ask.

Before acting on a terse reply, inspect reply-to/thread context and the recorded options. Check that the referenced question is still actionable: a superseded proposal, already-applied answer or invalidated option is not reactivated by a late reply. Record the late answer and clarify the current choice when needed; never replay an irreversible action from duplicate input. If it could refer to multiple questions, ask the narrow clarification rather than guessing. Store the verbatim answer/source, resolve the queue item, and update any affected original hold in place with its superseding decision. Approval applies to the named action/scope, not other environments or the whole backlog.

Use the harness's supported question UI in-app; use the same structure as plain text over the authorized bridge. Prefer a supported asynchronous question path. Before a blocking question call, check capacity and dispatch independent ready work; then ask in the same turn without waiting for those agents to finish. Status messages follow coordinator-kit:comms-register.

For an existing bridge with supported option buttons, use its documented question command when both sender and active receiver support callbacks. Keep typed replies available. Save the actual send result, stable question id, message id and exact token-to-label mapping; exit 0 alone may mean "not configured" and is not delivery evidence. Validate the sender, question/message identity and selected option before applying a button response as a typed answer. Persist handling before acknowledgment; reject replayed, stale or superseded callbacks without repeating side effects. A button delivery receipt is not approval beyond that question.