Talking to a running step

Mark a step interactive and it waits when its prompt is done, so you can talk to the agent before it moves on.

Sometimes you do not want a decision, you want a conversation. Mark a prompt step interactive and it runs its prompt, then stops and waits for a person:

- type: prompt
  name: Explore the approach
  prompt: Look at how search is implemented today and propose two ways to fix it.
  interactive: true

Until somebody ends it, anyone who can see the run can open the step and talk to the same agent — send messages, read replies, watch the tools it uses. The conversation is part of the run, and shows in both places.

How it is different from a question

Whose idea it is.

  • With allowQuestions, the agent decides it is blocked and asks. The step carries on the moment it is unblocked.
  • With interactive, the step does not finish at all. There is no timeout that decides for anybody — a workflow with an interactive step is one a person has to attend, and the editors say so.

Two ways out

  • Proceed — accept and advance to the next step.
  • Request changes — re-run the phase, with the conversation threaded into the next prompt. This exists because a conversation that concludes "this approach is wrong" would otherwise strand you.

Cancelling the run is the third exit, and belongs to the run rather than the step.

What it looks like

A chat, pointed at one step: the step's own work read top to bottom, your turns as bubbles, what the agent did between them folded to a line, a composer at the foot, and the two ways out at the end.

More than one person can be in one conversation. Turns arrive in order, each carrying its author, so two people typing is ordinary.

It does not pin a machine

Nobody is at the keyboard at three in the morning, and there is no auto-proceed, so every interactive step eventually stops being watched. Peractor keeps the machine warm for a short window after the prompt, then saves the work and gives the machine back — with the decision still open.

Somebody who comes back later starts a container again, the work is checked back out, and the conversation carries on. So a step waiting overnight costs nothing while nobody is in it.

You are told when a step starts waiting, and told again if it is still waiting much later — otherwise the only signal would be a status on the board that never moves.