Background Agent is painfully slow and limited

Feedback
1

I configured and tried to run a background agent. It started to behave as expected. However, I never got it to run to completion, and usually not much further than build state.

Most time, what happens is either:

  1. Build fails on some deb package install or network request error (I use a Dockerfile)
  2. The instance starts, but the Agent is simply unable to use any tool. The tools simply timeout 90% of the time. (stuck on “Running…” then, when I ask, it says there was no output)

This is actually weird because if I run the exact same commands I ask in the chat, into the terminal, they work real fine.

I would prefer that my background job is throttled until there is a real capacity available, or not run at all. Here I find myself waiting ages for a build and then the tools timeout… big waste of time.

You might find this feedback a bit negative… don’t! If I am frustrated it’s because I see so much potential in this tool. The execution and UI seems so good.

It just does not work for me, and I will retry until it does, so good luck team, ramp up the infra before too many people get a wrong first impression!

Cheers

Aurelien

2 Likes
2

Does this have anything to do with your . env?

Environment variables don’t get passed to the Background Agent, which might be causing your failures.

3

The task was “Run the ls command line and then wait for my prompt”.

It got immediately stuck trying to run ls…

Running ls myself in the terminal worked fine.

4

Here is a prefix that I use, trying to increase the chances it work:

Start by waiting that the instances cools down by running `sleep 60 && echo done`.
If the output is `done`, then continue, otherwise there might be an error, 
so just stop the work immediately. Then start the work:

Not sure if it helps fwiw

Edit: it did not help. in the last run it passed the sleep and then got stuck on the next command…

5

yes i captured same here as well

1 Like