Agents coordinating across channels can wait in long shell polling loops. While a loop runs, a ready handoff from another channel can't start the waiting agent's work, so a review sits idle until a person stops the run by hand.

## Observed (Canary 0.0.11, October 5)

`github-row-review` was waiting to review the change owned by `github-row-actions`. Times are local, taken from the channel store.

- **12:03:58** The reviewer reasoned "I can't block on messages, I should poll the lane worktree periodically with a sleep interval instead". It then ran one bash call that loops 60 times over `git status`/`git log` with `sleep 30` and prints only `tail -5` at the end. It set `timeout: 1900`, so the call could take up to about 30 minutes, and its output stays hidden until it ends. - **~12:05** `github-row-actions` pushed `fd5e837`. At **12:05:38** it called `message` to `github-row-review` with `invoke: true` and the text "the diff is ready to review…". The tool returned "Delivered to github-row-review". - The review chat stayed inside the polling call, and no review work happened. - **12:09:23** Nate pressed Stop. The bash call ended as aborted. - **12:09:39** Nate sent a fresh prompt that restated the handoff, and the review resumed and completed normally.

### Store data seen read-only after the fact

- In `github-row-review`, the invoked message has a submission (`requestId message:11c3f378486cbd27:169`). Its status is `unanswered` with reason `aborted`, and it has no transcript entry. The handoff text doesn't appear in the reviewer's transcript. Later agent messages do appear as `ace.message` entries. - This suggests the invocation was queued behind the active run, and that Stop then resolved it as unanswered without placing it. Whether that is the intended behavior of Stop, and what the Canary UI showed for the queued input, was **not** verified. Treat this as something to investigate, not as a proven lost-message bug.

## Inferred / to investigate

- When an invoked message arrives at a busy chat, it waits for the current run to finish. A long blocking tool call therefore delays the handoff for as long as the call runs. - What should Stop do with queued input from another channel: place it, run it next, or discard it? Can the sender and the participants tell which of these happened? "Delivered" currently means the message was accepted, not that the agent saw it.

## Desired outcome

- **Finish-and-wake coordination:** agent guidance says to end the run and let an incoming channel message (`invoke: true`) wake the agent, rather than waiting in shell `sleep`/poll loops for another channel. The waiting agent states in chat what it is waiting for. - **Avoid long blocking waits:** don't use shell polling as a substitute for messaging. Real long-running processes belong in managed jobs (#53). - **Visible queued and blocked handoffs:** participants can see that a chat has queued input, who sent it, and what is blocking it. They can steer or cancel it (#24), and Stop doesn't make it disappear silently. - **Consider wake/interrupt support** only if guidance and visibility aren't enough. For example, an incoming handoff could end an interruptible wait, or a run could check for pending input between steps. Interrupting a run must never re-run tool calls that already changed something.

Related: #24 (steer queued messages), #53 (background/interactive jobs), #52 (supervising subagents), #57 (cross-host messaging), #12 (attention for waiting work), #99 (plain-language progress and blockers). Dogfooding core/QOL: #5.