Being away — /afk

/afk on tells Humanize that nobody is at the prompt. A question an agent or the flow asks you is answered at once with nothing, and the run carries on instead of waiting for you. Turn it on before you leave a long run alone.

At a glance

• You will stop a run from waiting on you, and turn that off again when you are back.
• Use it when you leave a run that might ask you something: overnight, over lunch, or before you detach.
• You need hmz open, with or without a run. Your first run starts one.

Try it

/afk          flips it
/afk on       you are away
/afk off      you are here   ← where it starts

How it works

Some flows ask you things: a planner that needs a decision, an agent that asks which of two approaches you want, a chat that waits for your next message. Each question is put by an outworlder, the role in a flow that is you, and while you are here it waits for your answer. See Questions.

/afk on says you are away. From then on:

• a question already waiting is answered by nobody, at once;
• an agent that asks is shown asking, is told nobody answered, and carries on;
• a flow's question is answered with nothing, or with the flow's defaults. One with no default fails the flow with nobody is there to answer …, unless the flow handles that;
• chat, waiting for your next message, is answered with nothing and ends. Questions has the table.

Away belongs to the run rather than to your interface. It stays said after you leave, and every interface reading the run shows it.

Example: leave a Ralph loop for the evening

A ralph_loop is working through a refactor and will run for hours. You want it to keep going even if an agent stops to ask something. Step through what the screen does:

hmz · ralph_loopdrawn, not recorded

0000000000

● agent is working · conversation 3 of 3

❯ /afk off

here: an agent may stop and ask you

agent · claude/claude-opus-5-5:high · ● 3

❯ /afk on1

·|· agent… (2m14s · ctrl+c twice to stop)shift+tab switch view · / commands · shift+enter newline · ← monitor · ctrl+c stop

Where it starts: an agent that stops to ask waits for your answer.

What to look at, by number:

1. /afk on, typed on the transcript of every agent, so it covers the whole run.
2. away: agents that ask are told nobody is here. The confirmation. /afk off answers here: an agent may stop and ask you, and on an outworlder's transcript here as <role>: agents may stop and ask you.
3. afk · on the status line, in yellow, in front of everything else. It stays there until you turn it off, so you cannot come back and forget it.

Check it worked

• The status line starts with afk.
• Above the editor, no outworlder's line says asking, as human · outworlder · asking does while a question waits on you.
• If the flow asks something while you are away, the run carries on rather than showing waiting for you on the status line.

One outworlder at a time

A flow may have more than one outworlder, each with a transcript of its own that shift+tab reaches. Where you type /afk decides whom it is about:

Where	/afk sets
an outworlder's transcript	that outworlder alone; the status line names it, afk human
anywhere else: an agent's or a conversation's transcript, or the monitor	every outworlder at once, undoing what was set for one

A chat has one outworlder, you, and no transcript of it apart from the conversation, so /afk on is typed in the conversation itself:

hmz · chatdrawn, not recorded

0000000000

❯ hey

● Hey, what shall we build next?1

❯ /afk on

away: agents that ask are told nobody is here2

— the flow is done —3

assistant · claude/claude-opus-5-5:high · ○ 1

❯

afk4 · ◉ chat · ~/work/api/ commands · shift+enter newline · ctrl+c exit

In chat, every reply waits for your next message, so being away ends the conversation.

1. Hey, what shall we build next?: the assistant's reply, waiting on your next message.
2. away: …: the confirmation.
3. — the flow is done —: an empty next message ends the chat. This is why /afk belongs off in a flow built around talking to you.
4. afk: away, on the status line.

Where somebody else has claimed an outworlder, /afk from anywhere but an outworlder's transcript leaves theirs as they left it, and /afk on their outworlder's transcript is refused, saying whose it is.

/afk is about questions, not approvals

A flow's agents never wait for approval, whether you are here or away. See Permissions.

Variations

• Before a run starts. /afk on works with nothing running. The next run starts away.
• Without the interface. hmz exec has nobody at a prompt, so it always runs as if /afk were on. A question an agent asks is still printed, in yellow, so you can read afterwards what it wanted. See Run it unattended.
• From a flow. A flow can check whether you are away. See The person as an agent.

Troubleshooting

The chat ended as soon as I turned it on

In chat, every reply waits for your next message, and being away answers it with nothing, which ends the conversation. Leave /afk off in any flow built around talking to you.

I came back and the run is waiting on me

/afk was off, or was set for another outworlder. Answer the question, or type /afk on anywhere but an outworlder's transcript to cover them all.

I came back and a decision was made without me

That is what away means: the question was answered with nothing, or with the flow's own default. Turn /afk off while you are at the prompt. To carry on from before that point, see Picking a run up.

Next steps

• Questions: what each kind of question does with an empty answer.
• Leaving it running: close the terminal and keep the run.
• Picking a run up: for a run that stopped while you were away.