Allow forked agents to take multiple turns (interactive mode)
Problem
Forked agents (spawned via the Agent tool without a subagent_type) are currently limited to a single turn. They execute autonomously, return a result, and the parent conversation receives a completion notification. That's it.
This means forks have to guess at every decision point. If the prompt was ambiguous or the fork encounters a choice that could go multiple ways, it picks one — and if it picks wrong, the entire fork's work is wasted.
Proposal
Add an opt-in setting that lets forked agents take multiple turns by asking the user questions mid-execution. Instead of running as a single autonomous pass, the fork could:
- Start working on the task
- Hit a decision point or ambiguity
- Surface a question to the user (via
AskUserQuestionor similar) - Receive the user's answer
- Continue working with that context
- Repeat as needed until done
The fork keeps its full context across turns — same agent, same conversation history. The parent still gets the final completion notification when the fork finishes.
Why this matters
Forks are great for offloading work, but the one-turn constraint forces a tradeoff: either front-load every possible decision into the prompt (verbose, error-prone), or accept that the fork will guess and potentially waste effort. Multi-turn forks would let agents iterate toward the right outcome the same way the main conversation does.
This issue has 2 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗