I build a project for my code repo, and ask it to solve a small bug. After 5 minutes running it still cannot give me the result. And checking its process I found it’s always try to edit some file are not related to my project, like events.json, index.json, setup-logs.txt, notes.md.
After I ask him what happened and check the thought process, what it thinks are all related to the cloud agent setup, if you want to know what happened you can try to translate the following thought process by yourself
Hey, thanks for the report. Sorry this burned time and tokens.
First, here’s what you saw. In a Project, the main chat is the coordinator. It doesn’t edit code itself. It hands work off to a separate cloud agent, then tracks that agent’s progress. The files events.json, index.json, and setup-logs.txt were the coordinator checking setup and that agent’s status, and notes.md is the Project’s own progress log. None of these touch your repo.
What went wrong: the agent that was launched didn’t start working for about five and a half minutes, so the coordinator kept checking its status instead of returning results. I shared the details with the team.
A couple things that’ll help us narrow it down:
Was this a Project on the agent-zoo repo at around 09:46 UTC today, 17 September?
If you open that Project and click the agent card under the coordinator called “Investigate gap-check duplication”, do you see an error message there, or is it just an empty dialog?
For now: for a small one-file change, a regular Cloud Agent or a local chat will usually be faster than a Project, since there’s no extra coordinator step. Projects are most useful when you need multiple tasks running in parallel. Share the answers to the two points above, and I’ll post here once I have an update.
This lines up: the agent that the coordinator started under its own identity (“Investigate gap-check duplication”) didn’t begin working for a few minutes after launch. So the coordinator kept checking its status the whole time instead of returning a result to you. That explains the edits to the internal files (events.json, index.json, setup-logs.txt, notes.md) and the tokens spent with no output. This shouldn’t happen, and it’s not something on your setup. We’re tracking the issue. I can’t share an exact timeline yet, but I’ll post here when there’s an update.
For now, a workaround is to use a regular Cloud Agent or a local chat for a small change in a single file. It’ll be faster than Projects since there’s no intermediate coordinator step. Projects are best when you need to run several tasks in parallel.