Co-work teammate silently stalls when agent calls AskUserQuestion

Summary

Co-work teammates silently stall indefinitely when the agent calls AskUserQuestion. The permission request is emitted but never surfaced in the Desktop UI, leaving the teammate hung with no user-visible indication of what's wrong. The system logs lam_tool_permission_stalled after 5 minutes but the user sees nothing.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a co-work task in Claude Desktop that involves multi-step work (e.g., auditing and organizing Notion content)
2. The teammate agent eventually decides it needs user input and calls AskUserQuestion
3. The teammate hangs indefinitely — no prompt appears in the Desktop UI
4. The user sees the task appears "stuck" with no indication of why

Expected Behavior

Either:

• Option A: AskUserQuestion should be included in the co-work --allowedTools list so the permission request isn't needed, and the question should render in the co-work UI (similar to how it renders in the CLI terminal)
• Option B: If AskUserQuestion is intentionally excluded from co-work, the model should be instructed (via system prompt or tool filtering) not to use it, and instead use mcp__spaces__reply_to_space or mcp__cowork__present_files to communicate with the user
• Option C: At minimum, stalled permission requests should produce a visible notification in the Desktop UI so the user knows something needs attention

Actual Behavior

• The permission request is emitted and logged internally
• The Desktop UI shows no prompt, notification, or indicator
• After 5 minutes, lam_tool_permission_stalled fires — but this is only visible in the log files
• The teammate remains hung until the user manually investigates logs or kills the session

Evidence from Logs

Two occurrences in the same session (local_006e09b3-86a7-4849-a61e-ae53eaa98622), teammate adoring-stoic-meitner:

Occurrence 1:

2026-02-27 12:29:09 Emitted tool permission request 2a33bee4 for AskUserQuestion
2026-02-27 12:34:09 lam_tool_permission_stalled    ← 5 min later, silent

Occurrence 2:

2026-02-27 13:06:58 Emitted tool permission request 251ba4e8 for AskUserQuestion
2026-02-27 13:11:58 lam_tool_permission_stalled    ← 5 min later, silent

For comparison, MCP tool permission requests in the same session were auto-approved immediately:

2026-02-27 13:05:20 Emitted permission request for notion-fetch → approved "once" instantly
2026-02-27 13:05:22 Emitted permission request for notion-fetch → approved "once" instantly
2026-02-27 13:05:33 Emitted permission request for notion-search → approved "once" instantly
...repeated ~8 times, all approved within seconds

Root Cause Analysis

The co-work spawn config does not include AskUserQuestion in --allowedTools:

--allowedTools Task,Bash,Glob,Grep,Read,Edit,Write,NotebookEdit,WebFetch,
TodoWrite,WebSearch,Skill,REPL,JavaScript,mcp__*...,mcp__spaces__reply_to_space

When the agent calls AskUserQuestion, it triggers the --permission-prompt-tool stdio flow. MCP tool permission prompts are handled (auto-approved with "once"), but AskUserQuestion permission prompts are not rendered in the Desktop UI.

Environment

• Claude Desktop: v1.1.4498
• Claude Code CLI (host): v2.1.62
• Co-work VM SDK: v2.1.51
• macOS: 26.1 (25B78), Apple M3 Pro, 18GB
• VM config: 4 CPUs, 4GB RAM, Ubuntu 22.04 guest
• Permission mode: --permission-mode default

Suggested Fixes (in order of preference)

1. Add AskUserQuestion to co-work allowedTools and render the question UI in the co-work panel (best UX)
2. Filter AskUserQuestion from available tools in the co-work environment so the model never attempts it, and guide it toward mcp__spaces__reply_to_space instead
3. Surface stalled permission requests as a visible Desktop notification or inline alert in the co-work UI, with a "Respond" or "Dismiss" action

Workaround

Users can include explicit instructions in their co-work task prompt:

"Do not use AskUserQuestion. If you need clarification, use mcp__spaces__reply_to_space to ask me, or make your best judgment and proceed."

Labels

bug, co-work, desktop