# Rationale — "How do you know when your coding agent is done?"

FRE-199 item 1, page 1 of the first pair. Drafted 2026-11-05 by CMO.

## The phrase

Primary: **"how do you know when your coding agent is done"** (variants: "agent
finished silently", "claude code waiting for permission" overlaps on the
blocked-half; this page owns the *done*-half).

Chosen by the FRE-199 selection rule: strongest buying intent we can answer
honestly without naming a product. It is on the standing phrase list
(`drafts/listening.md` §The phrase list: "how do I know when my agent is done").

## Why this phrase won the slot

- **Recurrence with independence.** The "zero looks exactly like success"
  pattern appears in at least four separate sources across Scans 5–9: 1xm09fs,
  the code-review PSA (1xmnz2c), and two HN commenters (fhub, sadilek), plus
  the queue operator's done-signal workaround (1xjb3j0). Four independent
  formulations of one pain in seven days is the strongest recurrence the
  backlog shows.
- **Buying intent.** The people describing it are running agents unattended
  right now and are losing time to the gap — they are past curiosity.
- **Answerable honestly, generically.** The mechanism (Stop / Notification /
  StopFailure hooks) is documented in the agent's own reference; every claim in
  the page traces to it. Nothing about our product is needed to answer it.
- **Wedge-aligned.** "An agent blocked is the most expensive kind of idle" —
  the done-half of that sentence (idle you never learn about) is this page.

## Evidence trail

| Thread | Date | What it showed |
|---|---|---|
| r/ClaudeCode 1xjb3j0 — "self-hosted queue of autonomous Claude Code sessions" | 2026-10-31 | Sessions "finished their work but never sent the done signal, and held their slots for hours"; operator derives done from git + idle transcript; "a waiting one has to name what it's waiting on" |
| r/ClaudeCode 1xm09fs | 2026-11-02 | First "zero looks exactly like success" instance (verbatim buyer phrasing) |
| r/ClaudeCode 1xmnz2c — code-review plugin PSA | 2026-11-03 | Green check + "No findings" when the review never ran; third independent instance |
| HN comments (fhub, sadilek) | 2026-11-04/05 | Human-attention concurrency ceiling quantified twice more |

All rows live in `drafts/listening.md` (The-Nook local master line, single
canonical copy per FRE-748) with URLs and verbatim quotes.

## Gates before this page ships

1. **Sponsor fact-check** of the claims table in `copy.md` (owner: Michael
   Freno). Page moves `pending/` → `approved/` on his read, per the marketing
   tree's hard rule.
2. **CTO eyes on the agent-behaviour claims** — all four are sourced to the
   Claude Code hooks reference re-read 2026-11-05, but anything asserted about
   an agent's behaviour is CTO-verifyable, and the FRE-199 plan routes it to
   him.
3. **Publish path:** `pending/` → `approved/` → a human places it on
   nook.freno.me (blog route). Nothing posts itself.

## Ban compliance (FRE-199 + positioning.md rule 1)

- The Nook: not named. The notch, the island, the companion: not mentioned.
- Competitors (notch apps, agent monitors, Remote Control–style tools): not
  named. Remote Control is not mentioned either — the page answers the done-half
  without touching the away-from-desk half.
- Claude Code is named only as the subject whose documented behaviour the page
  explains, with its own docs as the source — the same status the listening
  phrase list already gives it. It is the agent, not a competitor.
- No superlatives, no benchmark numbers, no invented testimonials, no price,
  no roadmap dates.

## Cadence note

This page and `agent-waiting-on-permission/` are the first pair. The queue
behind them (multiple-agents tracking, invisible-permission cluster) holds well
above the three-candidate floor, so the two-a-week cadence holds without
inventing phrases.