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Gateway: text messages while agent is busy are silently queued — no interrupt, no feedback #31588

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Gateway: text messages while agent is busy are silently queued — no interrupt, no feedback#31588
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P2Medium — degraded but workaround existscomp/gatewayGateway runner, session dispatch, deliverytype/bugSomething isn't working

Description

@Quarkex
Quarkex
opened on May 24, 2026

Summary

When the agent is actively running (executing tool calls), incoming text messages from the user are silently queued with no interruption and no feedback. The user has no way to stop the agent except by using /stop. Natural language stop requests ("stop", "para", "frena") are treated as regular messages and enqueued.

Impact

High — the user loses control of the agent during long tool-call sequences. The only escape hatch is knowing about /stop, which is not discoverable in the moment.

Reproduction

  1. Send a message that triggers a multi-tool-call response (e.g. a complex coding task)
  2. While the agent is running, send a plain text message like "stop" or "wait"
  3. Observe: no feedback, no interruption. The message is queued silently.
  4. The agent continues until it finishes or /stop is used.

Root Cause

gateway/platforms/base.py lines ~3317-3339:

When session_key in self._active_sessions and the message is not a recognized slash command (checked via should_bypass_active_session), the message enters the queue path:

if self._is_queue_text_debounce_candidate(event):
    await self._queue_text_debounce(session_key, event)
else:
    merge_pending_message_event(self._pending_messages, session_key, event, ...)
return  # Don't process now - will be handled after current task finishes

No feedback is sent to the user. No interrupt is triggered.

Evidence from logs

19:08:21 INFO [Telegram] Flushing text batch ...session... (6 chars)
19:09:56 INFO [Telegram] Flushing text batch ...session... (24 chars)
19:10:49 INFO [Telegram] Flushing text batch ...session... (13 chars)
19:11:04 INFO [Telegram] Flushing text batch ...session... (4 chars)
19:11:48 INFO Invalidated run generation [...] (stop_command)  <- /stop finally worked

Four messages received and flushed but never delivered as interrupts. Only /stop broke through.

Proposed Solutions (not mutually exclusive)

  1. Feedback on queue: When a message is enqueued during an active session, send a brief acknowledgment: "⏳ Agent busy — message queued. Use /stop to interrupt."
  2. Natural stop-word detection: Recognize bare stop-intent messages (configurable list: "stop", "para", "halt", "cancel", etc.) and treat them as /stop equivalents.
  3. Configurable busy_text_mode: interrupt: Add an option where ANY incoming text interrupts the running agent (current behavior is queue-only unless busy_input_mode: steer).

Solution 1 is the minimum viable fix — the user at least knows their message did not interrupt anything.

Environment

  • Hermes Agent (latest main as of 2026-05-24)
  • Platform: Telegram DM
  • Model: claude-opus-4.6 via gateway

Activity

  1. alt-glitch
    added
    type/bugSomething isn't working
    P2Medium — degraded but workaround exists
    comp/gatewayGateway runner, session dispatch, delivery
    on May 24, 2026

  2. kiyo-e commented on May 26, 2026

    @kiyo-e
    kiyo-e
    on May 26, 2026

    I’m seeing this on Telegram as well.

    When I send another normal text message while a Telegram turn is active, it does not interrupt the current run. The current run continues with no visible feedback that the new message was queued. After the current run finishes, that queued message is then read and handled as the next turn.

    This happens even when the active turn is not especially long-running. I started noticing it after updating to a build where #21444 appeared to be addressed, though I’m not saying that fix necessarily caused it.

  3. perqin commented on May 28, 2026

    @perqin
    perqin
    on May 28, 2026

    I ran into the same issue and found that it is introduced by #31341 . You could explicitly add display.busy_text_mode: interrupt in config.yaml to go back to the previous behavior. Sadly I think this is a breaking change and the default value should be interrupt instead of queue🙁

  4. UnderLotus commented on May 29, 2026

    @UnderLotus
    UnderLotus
    on May 29, 2026

    Confirming this on v0.15.1 (2026.5.29), Telegram gateway.

    Text messages while agent is busy are silently queued — no interrupt, no ack. Only /stop breaks through.

    Log evidence (same pattern as OP):

    02:15:03 INFO [Telegram] Flushing text batch ... (1 chars)
02:15:03 INFO gateway.run: inbound message: ... msg=. 
02:18:14 INFO STOP for session ... — agent interrupted (stop_command)  ← /stop finally worked

    Three minutes of text messages completely ignored in between.

  5. teknium1
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 6, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (#40590)

    54e7b74

  6. teknium1 commented on Jun 6, 2026

    @teknium1
    teknium1
    on Jun 6, 2026
    Collaborator

    Fixed in PR #40590 (merged to main as 54e7b74). Root cause: a second undocumented knob, busy_text_mode (default queue), short-circuited plain TEXT messages before busy_input_mode was consulted — so the advertised interrupt default was silently overridden. busy_input_mode is now the single source of truth and defaults to interrupt; busy_text_mode survives only as a legacy explicit override. #40590

  7. teknium1
    closed this as completedon Jun 6, 2026
  8. alt-glitch
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 14, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (#40590)

    4c2805b
  9. davidgut1982
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 17, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    07e88a8
  10. T02200059
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 18, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    e8c0438
  11. xyshanren
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 25, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    2995f9a
  12. alaamohanad169-ship-it
    added a commit that references this issue on Jun 30, 2026

    fix(gateway): send feedback when text messages are queued during acti…

    5eef8f0
  13. waefrebeorn
    added a commit that references this issue on Jul 2, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    4a4b2d3
  14. santhreal
    added a commit that references this issue on Jul 13, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    c7d086a
  15. donbowman
    added a commit that references this issue on Jul 13, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    e35282a
  16. Gravezzz
    added a commit that references this issue on Jul 21, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    a63db57
  17. leewenjie
    added a commit that references this issue on Aug 7, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    ed8c2ff
  18. melon-xf
    added a commit that references this issue on Sep 3, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    1161e28
  19. fsca8
    added a commit that references this issue on Oct 6, 2026

    fix(gateway): plain text while busy interrupts by default again (Nous…

    b4b5453
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