ConnectOnionThe tool finished but the turn did not
Bound parent model settlement, retry once after a timeout, and end with an explicit error if the retry also expires.
By ConnectOnion Team · 2 min read · 209 words
Our release gate watched Claude Code finish a real project, return control to the parent Agent, and then disappear behind a model request that never returned. The files were correct. The provider Work Room had a completed result. The outer composer still could not come back because the parent turn had no terminal outcome.
We already handled a nearby failure: a model that returned an empty answer after successful tool work received one constrained recovery request. This was different. The model call itself remained in flight, so the empty-answer logic never ran.
Native provider work now starts a bounded settlement phase. Every later parent model call in that phase has a hard limit. The first timeout abandons only that call and asks once for a concise answer grounded in the committed tool results. If the retry also times out, the turn ends with an explicit error. A late model response cannot enter history or claim success after the turn has settled.
The distinction matters for remote coding clients. A provider finishing its work is not the same as the parent turn finishing. Once a long-running child returns, the parent still owes the user one bounded outcome: continue, ask, complete, or fail. "Still thinking" forever is not a fifth outcome.