ADR-0015: Question Escalation Through the Planner¶
- Status:
Superseded
- Date:
2026-10-01
Note
Superseded by ADR-0026: Interactive Sessions That Park When Idle: sessions wait online for answers and park after a window; planner-first answering and assume-or-ask are kept.
Context¶
Humans should take part in execution only when an agent has a question. Many questions agents ask are already answered somewhere — in the documentation, an earlier decision, or the plan discussion. Every question that reaches a human costs waiting time, often hours overnight. Blocked sessions must not hold containers while waiting.
Decision¶
Agents follow an assume-or-ask rule (encoded in skills): record an assumption for reversible, low-impact uncertainty; ask a question for irreversible, high-impact or ambiguous ones.
Asking ends the session after pushing work in progress; the ticket enters Waiting for answer.
Questions go first to the planner agent, which answers only from cited sources (knowledge base, plan, documentation). Otherwise the question goes to the human inbox in the Ballet UI.
Humans answer in a sub-chat with the planner scoped to the ticket.
Answers are written to the knowledge base, and a new session of the same stage continues with the question and answer in context.
Alternatives Considered¶
All questions go to humans¶
Advantages:
Simplest; no risk of the planner answering wrongly.
Disadvantages:
Many avoidable interruptions and overnight stalls.
Keep the session alive while waiting¶
Advantages:
The asking agent keeps its full context.
Disadvantages:
Containers and sessions idle for hours; fragile across restarts.
Decision Criteria¶
Human time, waiting time, robustness, answer correctness.
Rationale¶
The planner holds the project’s context and can resolve questions that documentation already answers; requiring citations limits invented answers. Ending sessions makes waiting free and restart-safe; good stage reports and knowledge make resumption cheap.
Consequences¶
Positive¶
Fewer human interruptions; knowledge grows with every answer.
Negative¶
A resumed session must re-establish context.
Risks¶
The planner may answer confidently but wrongly; every planner answer is visible in the digest and can be overruled.
Follow-up¶
Notification channels (email, chat, push), configurable per user and project; the UI inbox is the only channel at first.
Measure share of questions answered by the planner.