Your Turn Is a Session Handoff, Not a Completion Claim

Agent Island v1.7.1 introduces a precise 'your-turn' state model for coding agents like Claude Code and Codex, distinguishing between mere inactivity and a genuine handoff to the developer. The system uses semantic session events—such as questions, approval prompts, or completion events—rather than stale signals like CPU usage or file modification times, to determine when the developer's input is needed.

When a coding agent stops producing output, the next step is not automatically yours. It may be waiting on a tool, calculating, stalled, or actually finished. A useful your-turn state needs stronger evidence than silence. The definition I use is narrow: your-turn means a specific Claude Code or Codex session has produced evidence that the next useful action belongs to the developer. “Stopped” describes activity. “Your turn” describes ownership of the next step. A semantic session event can support that handoff: an assistant message that asks a question, a structured approval prompt, or a completion event that explicitly returns control. File modification time, low CPU, and an unchanged process list are freshness clues, not proof of a handoff. This distinction prevents two common errors: When evidence is stale or ambiguous, the honest state is uncertainty. Multi-session workflows make generic alerts almost useless. If three Codex sessions are open, “Codex needs you” still leaves the developer searching. The handoff record should preserve the provider, project or thread identity, semantic event, and event time. Aggregation can rank a real your-turn state above passive working or stale state, but it must not erase the origin of the event. If two sessions need attention, the UI should show both or apply a deterministic priority rule. A single generic badge is not enough. Your-turn does not mean: Those are separate verification and authorization questions. A status label should not smuggle them into a convenient notification. Notification policy is part of the state model. When the exact target session is already frontmost, an extra sound may add no value. The visual state can remain while the sound is suppressed. If the developer switches away, the pending handoff must remain eligible for an alert. The monitor must also deduplicate events. Re-reading the same local record after an app restart should not produce a second alert. Stable event identity, or a documented replay key, keeps one handoff equal to one notification. Agent Island v1.7.1 applies this model to Claude Code and Codex status on macOS and Windows. It reports the handoff; it does not silently operate the coding agent. The canonical your-turn guide https://agent-island.dev/your-turn-state/?utm source=devto&utm medium=owned social&utm campaign=your turn state 20260727 contains the full boundary and verification sequence.