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Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

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Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#21

Turning this on by default is insane.

I am fine with this, and I will go as far as to say this is how most devs will be using agents soon (the big companies have already been using agents like this for 6-12 months.) I don't want my agent to pause on some inane question once I let it loose. I might not even be at my computer for that. Usually it makes the right decision anyways. If it doesn't I can always undo what it did. If you're worried about it getti…

And yet other people rely on it doing exactly the opposite. Aside from whether this behavior is useful, it is never warranted to change such an important thing unannounced.

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#22

Turning this on by default is insane.

I am fine with this, and I will go as far as to say this is how most devs will be using agents soon (the big companies have already been using agents like this for 6-12 months.) I don't want my agent to pause on some inane question once I let it loose. I might not even be at my computer for that. Usually it makes the right decision anyways. If it doesn't I can always undo what it did. If you're worried about it getti…

"I love lax security features therefore you should too." Defaults should be safe and risky action should be done at the user's own discretion

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#23
post #2

To each his own I guess. There was nothing more frustrating than walking away from a CC session you expected to churn away at for an hour and coming back to a user question sitting there. More useful would be just getting a list of clarifying questions at the end of the session along with how it answered itself to follow up with or not.

Just prompt it to not ask you questions then, the point of the ask user tool is to collect human input...

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#24

Just ran into this, and what the ACTUAL fuck were they thinking. And I can't turn it off, apparently?

They were thinking users won't find this setting to turn it on, so enable it by default and users that don't liker it can turn it off. The Ralph Wiggum and /goal software indicates that some users want the AI to plow forwards, guessing at what the user actually wants. Some users don't want that behavior, but Anthropic took guess that more people want it than don't. 60 seconds is too short though, imo.

Maybe true, but consider the incentives for a moment. Anthropic makes money when it increases token usage. This feature removes a roadblock to burning more tokens. Can you claim with certainty that there is no way that might have influenced their decision?

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#25
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way that isn't configurable and is on by default?

Reading the comments on the issue shows how to configure it "env": { "CLAUDE_AFK_TIMEOUT_MS" : " " } https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/73125#issue...

so there's a hack to disable it

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#26

Turning this on by default is insane.

I am fine with this, and I will go as far as to say this is how most devs will be using agents soon (the big companies have already been using agents like this for 6-12 months.) I don't want my agent to pause on some inane question once I let it loose. I might not even be at my computer for that. Usually it makes the right decision anyways. If it doesn't I can always undo what it did. If you're worried about it getti…

You only live once, right?!

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#27
~was truly surprised and delighted by this today. claude's recs are usually pretty good. imo as a product engineer this is a good default and all the cranky experts in here can turn it off.~

edit: didn't read closely enough to realize this can't be disabled / think about the perverse incentives. seems bad actually

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#28

Turning this on by default is insane.

I am fine with this, and I will go as far as to say this is how most devs will be using agents soon (the big companies have already been using agents like this for 6-12 months.) I don't want my agent to pause on some inane question once I let it loose. I might not even be at my computer for that. Usually it makes the right decision anyways. If it doesn't I can always undo what it did. If you're worried about it getti…

There are people who like to be pissed on, it doesn't mean it should be a default behavior.

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#29
If agent is asking a question it means it stumbled on something tricky and often an important architectural decision has to be made.

Even if I am staring at the screen at the time, it's often impossible to study code and make a judgement call that quickly.

My point being, even for opt-in it can be too short - highlights how little consideration they put into it, just releasing slop in production.

Re: Claude's AskUserQuestion: "No response after 60s – continued without an answer"

#30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fine with this, and I will go as far as to say this is how most devs will be using agents soon (the big companies have already been using agents like this for 6-12 months.) I don't want my agent to pause on some inane question once I let it loose. I might not even be at my computer for that. Usually it makes the right decision anyways. If it doesn't I can always undo what it did. If you're worried about it getti…

"I love lax security features therefore you should too." Defaults should be safe and risky action should be done at the user's own discretion

This isn't really security-related. The "AskUserQuestion" hook in question here is not the one that gets used for authorizing actions. That's a completely separate mechanism that is unaffected by this 60-second timer thing.

What this is referring to are those follow-up "here's two plausible alternative ways to do this, which one do you prefer?" questions you sometimes get, and usually at the beginning of a planning session when presumably you're still actively involved in the session. They get exponentially less likely as the turn goes on.

Maybe it's a good default, maybe it's not, I'll wait to pass judgment. But it's not security-related except in contrived scenarios you could construct where one side of an A-or-B UserQuestion has security implications that aren't caught by any other safeguard. I haven't ever really experienced that in practice.

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