A tab that seems stuck

A turn can run a long time without being stuck: a test run or a build may take many minutes. A turn that’s stuck keeps using your plan’s usage and gets nowhere, so Claudette watches for it.

What Claudette does

When a turn has run for a long time, or has produced no output for a while, Claudette asks Claude how it’s going.

  1. A bar over the message box counts down: Checking in with Claude in 30s. Send now sends the question straight away. The ✕ (Don’t check in) skips it, and the timers start again.
  2. Claude’s reply to the check-in appears in the conversation, and the turn carries on.
  3. If two check-ins in a row get no reply, Claudette stops asking for that turn. The tab’s row says Possibly stuck, and a bar over the message box says Claude hasn’t answered two check-ins. It may be stuck. with Stop.

By default a check-in starts after 15 minutes of running or 5 minutes without output. Check-ins on long turns has the whole story.

What to try

  1. Look before you stop it. Claude sees a check-in only between steps. If a single command is running, such as a long test run, the check-in is delivered when that command finishes. Open the Processes tool window (turned on in Settings → Tabs → Show the process monitor) to see whether the command is still busy, and read the conversation’s last tool call.
  2. Choose Stop, or press Esc. It interrupts the turn but doesn’t close the session. Then tell Claude what to do next, or what it was stuck on.
  3. Restart the tab if its Claude Code has exited: Restart in the status line resumes the same session. See A tab that won’t start.

Things that look stuck and aren’t

  • Waiting on you. A tab waiting on a permission prompt, a question or a plan isn’t counted: it shows needs input, and Ctrl/Cmd+J goes to the next tab waiting for you.
  • A usage limit. A tab stopped at a limit waits for the reset, and carries on by itself if you’ve left that on. See When a limit stops a task.
  • Claude is having trouble. Retries and overloaded errors can come from Claude’s side. Check the dot in the header: see Claude is having problems.
  • A message you sent while Claude was working. It waits for the next step, or for the turn to end if you chose to queue them.

Settings

Settings → Tabs → Check-ins on long turns:

  • Check in on long turns, on by default.
  • After the turn has run (minutes) and After no output for (minutes). Set a time to 0 to turn that trigger off.
  • Message, what Claudette asks.
  • Notify me when a check-in is sent, off by default.

A single tab can override them in its Tab settings….

See also

Back to top

Claudette is made by dotBunny under the MIT license. Privacy policy

Claude and Claude Code are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC. Godot and the Godot logo are trademarks of the Godot Foundation; the logo is by Andrea Calabró, under CC BY 4.0. Unity is a trademark or registered trademark of Unity Technologies or its affiliates in the U.S. and elsewhere. Unreal®, Unreal Engine®, and the Unreal Engine® logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. Other brands or product names are the trademarks of their respective owners. The logo is used with Epic's permission. Perforce, P4V and the Perforce logo are trademarks of Perforce Software, Inc. or one of its affiliates; the logo is used with Perforce's permission. Claudette isn't sponsored by, affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Other names are trademarks of their owners.

Edit this page on GitHub

This site uses Just the Docs, a documentation theme for Jekyll.