[sleeyax]

Summary

Answering an AskUserQuestion card failed with PreToolUse:AskUserQuestion hook error: The user left these questions to be asked in chat…, and Claude then asked every question again in chat.
It happens when a background agent's report wakes Claude inside a turn held open for it, and the person takes more than five minutes to answer.

The hold ends the turn after five minutes in which Claude writes nothing (SUBAGENT_WAKE_MS).
Claude writes nothing while it waits on a card, so the bound ran out under the open card, the turn ended, cancelPending cancelled the card, and the hook returned the ask-in-chat fallback.
The answers the plugin wrote a moment later were never read.

 reviewBackgroundHold
+  if a card Claude is held up behind is open
+    keep waiting
   if Claude wrote something within the wake bound
     keep waiting
   …
   end the turn

 answerProgressAt
   max(subagent, shell, assistant activity,
+      when the last blocking card was answered,
       when the hold began)

Evidence

From the session that hit it (adapter log and Claude's transcript, UTC):

Time	Event
12:21:53	Turn held for 1 background agent
12:30:01	Agent's task notification wakes Claude
12:30:16	Claude calls AskUserQuestion
12:35:08	Ending a turn Claude never answered its background work in, silentMs: 303086; hook returns the fallback
12:35:09	Submit writes the answers file, which is never read

New test goes on waiting while the question Claude asked for the agent that reported is still being answered:

hold a turn for an agent, agent reports, Claude asks a question
wait 4× the wake bound          → turn still open
answer the card                 → hook allows with the answer
wait briefly                    → turn still open
Stop hook                       → turn ends

• Before: fails at the first turn still open check, because the turn has already ended.
• After: passes, along with the rest of the adapter suite (253 tests), and tsc --noEmit is clean.

Merge Danger

Door: two-way

Blast Radius: held turns

A held turn now stays open for as long as a blocking card is unanswered, so a session with an unanswered card in a held turn reads as busy until someone answers it or cancels.
Turns that aren't held for background work are unaffected.