# Steering, follow-up and cancellation

Status: proposed cross-harness contract; each adapter needs separate conformance
evidence. An incoming message alone does not establish interruption behavior.

Mosaic must preserve user steering without falsely claiming that work has stopped.
Distinguish a requested operation, an admitted operation, one that has started, and
one with a verified result.

| Intent | Intended effect |
|---|---|
| Steer | Make a correction visible before later affected work starts |
| Follow-up | Queue a request for a later turn |
| Collect | Combine compatible queued requests while preserving attribution |
| Pause | Stop admitting affected work and preserve a recovery checkpoint |
| Cancel | End the assigned work and reconcile operations already underway |

Exact commands and queue configuration remain implementation decisions.

## Tool boundaries

For sequential work, a correction should be checked before each later tool launch.
Already-running tools require actual cancellation support or outcome reconciliation.
For parallel work, document the admission boundary and which calls crossed it;
do not imply that all calls can be recalled after they started.

Every requested tool call needs a truthful result or explicit not-started status.
Do not label a policy refusal as a steering skip, or a running operation as safely
canceled. Keep the request, result, and relevant steering evidence attributable.

A status question does not cancel the assignment. A scope correction changes the
affected work, not unrelated tasks. A pause remains effective until its actual
resume conditions are met.

## Delivery and recovery

Expose queued, delivered, admitted, and completed as different states. Avoid blind
resends after uncertain delivery. Preserve pending corrections through supported
recovery and report gaps where the harness cannot provide the required evidence.

ACT-C05 assesses reasoning from a synthetic sequence. Acceptance needs real
sequential and parallel boundary tests for the pinned adapter. See
[runtime ownership](agent-runtimes.md) and [state awareness](session-state.md).