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Agent appears stalled

Distinguish genuinely slow work from a dead process using activity timing, the raw terminal, and provider status — before killing anything.

An agent that's gone quiet isn't necessarily stuck. A real turn — a long tool call, a slow provider response — can legitimately take a while.

Check these in order

  1. The raw terminal drawer — see Raw terminal drawer for what the underlying CLI is actually printing, if anything.
  2. How long it's actually been silent — no output at all right after starting is a different situation than a long pause after real content has already appeared.
  3. Provider-side latency or capacity — check Provider usage for a rate-limit or capacity signal that would explain the delay.

Warning

Do not kill a long-running task solely because one tool call is slow. Confirm there's genuinely no activity and no provider-side explanation first.

In AIgency

AIgency applies specific timing thresholds automatically (no output for 90 seconds at startup, no genuine content for 12 minutes, mid-run silence for 15 minutes) and flags a possible stall rather than killing the task outright — see Stall detection.