Reactive Wakeup Signaling (Event-Driven Execution Protocol)

Overview

When an agent launches a long-running background command (e.g., Docker container build, complete test suite run, database seed migration), naive agents fall into an Active Polling Loop:

• Turn 1: Launch background task task-101
• Turn 2: Call manage_task(Action: "status", TaskId: "task-101") $\rightarrow$ "Still running"
• Turn 3: Sleep $\rightarrow$ Call manage_task(Action: "status") $\rightarrow$ "Still running"
• ... (Repeated 15 to 25 times)

Active polling burns 30,000+ context tokens purely re-sending transcripts to check a boolean status flag, while locking the agent in a busy-wait loop.

The Reactive Wakeup Signaling Protocol leverages event-driven agent architectures: the agent launches the command, yields execution immediately by stopping tool calls, and allows the runtime event loop to automatically re-wake the agent upon process termination.

Active Polling Busy-Wait vs. Reactive Event Wakeup