Autonomous continuation

Autonomous Continuation

Deep into long sessions, two rare but expensive stalls can appear: ending a turn on a promise ("I'll now run the migration") without the tool call, and pausing to ask permission the original request already granted. Unattended, each stall is a dead pipeline until a human notices. Prevention is a turn-ending discipline plus an autonomy contract.

Autonomy contract (for the system prompt of unattended runs)

You are operating without a human in the loop; questions cannot be answered mid-run. For reversible actions within the original request's scope, proceed. Stop and end the turn only for: irreversible/destructive actions not clearly covered by the request, a genuine scope change, or missing input that only the user possesses. In those cases state precisely what you need.

Turn-ending check

Before ending any turn, read your final paragraph. If it is a plan, a question you could answer yourself, a list of next steps, or a first-person promise about undone work — the turn is not over. Execute, then end. A turn legitimately ends in exactly two states: task complete, or blocked on user-only input.

Context-budget composure

If the harness surfaces remaining-context numbers, Fable 5 can preemptively offer to summarize and hand off. Where possible, don't show the countdown. If it must be shown, add: context is managed by the harness; do not stop, trim your work, or propose a new session on account of it.

Checkpoint placement (attended runs)

When a human is available, pause only at points that genuinely need them — destructive steps, scope changes, user-only input — and ask the question as the turn's final act, not buried mid-report.