Proposal: a non-blocking progresstool (twin ofquestion) so coding agents can signal long-running work without looking dead or abusing questions

Coding agents can ask the user questions (question / AskUserQuestion), but they have no standard way to say:

“I’m still alive — waiting on a compile / subagent / long job.”

So today they either:

• look frozen
• burn tokens polling
• abuse the question tool for status updates

Control surfaces (T3 Code, etc.) already have UI for Working / Waiting — they just don’t get a clean signal from the model.

Classic waiting UX:

(xkcd 303)

A tiny, non-blocking twin of question:

progress({
  id: "compile-1",           // stable id → update / clear later
  status: "running" | "done" | "error" | "waiting",
  title: "Waiting on tsc",
  detail?: "34s elapsed",
  progress?: 0.65            // optional 0–1
})

Rules:

• fire-and-forget (does not the agent)
• same id updates in place
• never requires a human reply
• harness / UI decides how to render (toast, status bar, Agents panel, OSC, …)

question = “I need you.”

progress = “I’m still working.”

(xkcd 927)

One small shared shape beats five slightly different notify plugins.

• Agents — honest status without polling or fake questions
• Harnesses (OpenCode, Claude Code, Codex, …) — one tool to implement
• Control surfaces (T3 Code, etc.) — one event to map into existing UI

Draft only. OpenCode already has community notify plugins; MCP has progress notifications. Nothing cross-harness is standard yet.