write_agent may block until the target background agent starts actively processing, causing new user input to queue
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描述
### Describe the bug
When calling write_agent to send a message to an idle background agent, the tool call appears to not return control back to the assistant's turn until the target agent has actually woken up and started actively running (processing the new message). If the user sends a new message during this window, it gets queued instead of being handled immediately — even though, from the assistant's perspective, only a single lightweight tool call was made.
Observed pattern (2 occurrences in one session):
1. Assistant calls write_agent targeting an idle background agent (e.g., asking it to start a new sub-task).
2. Assistant's turn appears to hang / user's next message gets queued for an extended period (not just a few seconds).
3. User presses Ctrl+C to interrupt and regain control.
4. Side effect: the background agent that had just been "woken up" by the write_agent call is found to be in a Cancelled state afterward (confirmed via list_agents ), even though the user did not intend to cancel that specific agent — it seems the Ctrl+C interrupt, aimed at escaping the queue, also tore down whatever background agent had just transitioned into "actively running."
This happened twice with two different background agents in the same session (both times right after a write_agent call woke an idle agent into active work).
Expected behavior:
write_agent (and any similar "dispatch to background agent" tool) should return control to the assistant's current turn immediately after the message is enqueued/delivered, without waiting for the target agent to actually begin processing — so the assistant's turn can end promptly and the user's own next input is never blocked/queued behind a background agent's execution.
Environment:
• GitHub Copilot CLI version: 1.0.70
• Platform: Linux
Additional note: This is a hypothesis based on observed correlation (not confirmed via internal logs/source), but the pattern was consistent across two independent incidents in the same session.
### Affected version
_No response_
### Steps to reproduce the behavior
_No response_
### Expected behavior
_No response_
### Additional context
_No response_
贡献指南
调研方向
首先跟踪 CLI 的 write_agent dispatch,以及 list_agents 如何报告 target 的状态;该 issue 没有提供源文件或复现步骤。调查控制是否会等待处理开始,以及 Ctrl+C 如何传播,然后验证 dispatch 是否会在交付后返回,而不会取消后台 agent。
由索引模型根据 Issue 内容生成。
评估
- 技术栈
- shell
- 领域
- cli
- Issue 类型
- 缺陷
- 难度
- 4/5
- 预计耗时
- 3-5 天
- 活跃度
- 冷清
- 描述清晰度
- 需要澄清
- 新手友好度
- 38/100