Make the AskUserQuestion auto-continue timeout configurable (and disable-able)

🤖 Written by Claude.

Problem

When the assistant uses AskUserQuestion (or asks a plan-mode question) and I don't respond within ~60s, Claude Code prints No response after 60s — continued without an answer and proceeds without my input.

This timeout is currently hardcoded — there's no settings.json key, environment variable, or CLI flag to change or disable it. The existing *_TIMEOUT_MS env vars (API_TIMEOUT_MS, BASH_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_MS, CLAUDE_STREAM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS, CLAUDE_ASYNC_AGENT_STALL_TIMEOUT_MS) don't cover interactive prompts, and toolConfig.askUserQuestion only controls preview formatting.

Why it matters

The whole point of AskUserQuestion is to block on a decision that's genuinely mine to make. Auto-continuing after 60s means that if I step away — which is common during long agent runs — the model picks a default and proceeds down a path I never approved. For an unattended/long-running session, 60s is far too short, and silently guessing is exactly the wrong behavior for a question the tool itself decided was worth asking.

Proposed solution

Two independently useful knobs:

1. A toggle to never auto-continue on an unanswered question — wait indefinitely (matching how canUseTool permission requests can stay pending). e.g. settings.json: "askUserQuestionTimeout": "never" or false.
2. A configurable window, e.g. an ASK_USER_QUESTION_TIMEOUT_MS env var / settings key, for people who want a longer-but-finite wait.

Ideally settable both globally and per-session.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI
• Observed on Opus 4.8