agent-status-pings

name	agent-status-pings
description	Emit standardized progress pings during long-running work so the coordinator and the user know whether you are alive, stuck, or done — never go dark.

Agent status pings

Long-running agent work (research, refactors, multi-step planning) MUST surface a heartbeat. Silence is the worst possible signal in a multi-agent system because the coordinator cannot tell silence from a stalled process.

When to use

• Any task you estimate will take more than 60 seconds of agent time.
• Any task spawned by a coordinator under parallel-agent-coordination, swarm-coordination, or crew-manager-pattern.
• Any plan executed under crew-planner-executor once you cross the first executor step.

The ping format

Use a short, structured message (Slack thread, planning task comment, or assistant message) with three fields:

status: <starting|working|blocked|waiting-for-human|done|failed>
progress: <one short sentence — what you finished, what you're doing next>
next_eta: <ISO timestamp or "<N> minutes">

Examples:

status: working
progress: parsed 3 of 7 repos; next is monorepo X
next_eta: 4 minutes

status: blocked
progress: terraform plan errors on missing IAM role poly-deploy
next_eta: human input needed; paused pending Slack reply

Cadence

• First ping within 30 seconds of starting (status: starting).
• Recurring status: working ping every 3–5 minutes, OR after every meaningful sub-step.
• Final ping is status: done (with a brief result summary) or status: failed (with the failure reason and what you tried).
• A blocked ping must include WHAT would unblock you — not just that you are stuck.

Where to send pings

• For agents wired into planning: append a comment on the parent task via planning_list_tasks → comment write.
• For Slack-enabled initiatives: post in the agent's thread channel.
• Always also append to your assistant reply so the human user sees it inline.

Anti-patterns

• Going silent for >5 minutes mid-task.
• Pinging only on success.
• A blocked ping that does not say what unblocks it.