# When an agent needs you

> The chat waits as long as it takes, the one that stopped says so, and an answer you tapped on a dead connection still arrives.

Agents stop. They stop to ask which of two things you meant, to ask permission
for something unusual, or to show you two options and let you pick.

## The chat waits

![an agent waiting on you — the question, and two options you can press](https://beafk.app/docs-shots/ask.webp)

While a question is open, that chat is **not tidied up**. The process
stays, and nothing about the turn is thrown away — an agent that asked you
something at 3am is still holding the question at 9.

It is sized for a night's sleep rather than for ever. With the tab open it waits
as long as you leave it; with nobody looking, a question is held for **twelve
hours**, and the machine lets the oldest one go if more than eight chats
are sitting on an unanswered question at once, or if it is running short of room
for new work. What goes is the agent's process — the thread is still there, and
the question is one you ask again.

## You can see which one stopped

You do not have to open four chats to find the one that is waiting. A
thread with a question open says so where you were already looking — on the
list of chats, on its chip in the shelf, and on the
[task](https://beafk.app/docs/tasks.md) it was started against.

So "is anything waiting on me?" is answered by the first screen, at a glance.

> [!NOTE]
> A question keeps for twelve hours with nobody looking, so arriving three hours
> late costs you nothing.

## The answer gets there

Tap an answer on a train, go into a tunnel, come out again: the answer is
delivered when the connection comes back. You do not have to say it twice.

The same is true the other way. Close the tab while a question is open and it is
still there when you come back.

## What a question looks like

- **A permission card** — "may I run this?" — with what it wants to do written
  out.
- **A question with options** — tap one. Options are one tap; a paragraph typed
  with your thumbs is not, so a well-behaved agent gives you choices.
- **A picture to choose between** — a page you can actually press, when the
  question is about a screen. See
  [seeing it before it is built](https://beafk.app/docs/seeing-it-before-it-is-built.md).

## Queueing instead of answering

You do not have to wait for a turn to finish to say the next thing. Type it and
it queues; the agent picks it up when it comes up for air. Useful for "…and when
you're done, run the tests".

## If you would rather not be asked

Give the chat a permission mode with more rope. See
[models, effort and permission](https://beafk.app/docs/models-effort-and-permission.md). The
trade-off is yours: fewer interruptions, less say in what happens.

---

beafk documentation · Agents · https://beafk.app/docs/when-an-agent-needs-you

In this section:
- Which agents beafk runs — https://beafk.app/docs/which-agents-beafk-runs.md
- Models, effort and permission — https://beafk.app/docs/models-effort-and-permission.md
- When an agent needs you — https://beafk.app/docs/when-an-agent-needs-you.md (this page)
- Closing the tab — https://beafk.app/docs/closing-the-tab.md

Every page, one line each: https://beafk.app/docs/llms.txt
All of it in one file: https://beafk.app/docs/llms-full.txt