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[bug] Saying "stop" does nothing — only "stop voice" is a command, and the agent replies "Stopped" anyway #331
Description
What happened
Coder Lead, 2026-08-06 23:51:37. The user said "Stop-stop." — meaning stop.
It was transcribed and sent as a chat message. The agent replied "Got it. Stopped." Nothing
stopped. The mic stayed live, and two phantom turns followed (see #(B), the companion ticket).
Cause: "stop" alone is not an exit phrase
packages/sdk/src/voice/convo.ts:147:
const EXIT_BY_LANG = {
en: ["exit voice", "exit voice mode", "stop voice", "stop voice mode",
"leave voice", "text mode", "switch to text", "back to text"],
…
}Every English phrase that contains "stop" requires the word "voice" after it. Bare "stop",
"stop stop", "stop listening" match nothing.
There is no vocabulary reason for this: phraseMatchesTranscript already allows a single-word
command when it is the whole utterance — the restriction exists so "don't forget to mute"
stays a message. "Stop-stop." was the whole utterance, so a listed "stop" would have fired
correctly and safely.
Stop-words are not the answer either: they are off unless configured (stripStopWord:394), and a
stop-word ends the turn — it submits the message. It does not stop the session.
The second half: the agent confirmed a stop it cannot perform
"Got it. Stopped."
Voice mode is client state. The agent has no visibility into it and no control over it — it
answered "stop" conversationally, as any assistant would. But the reply reads as confirmation, so
the user reasonably disengaged while the microphone was still open.
That is the same class as #254 and #259: an agent making a confident statement about a capability
it does not have, because nothing told it otherwise. Here the honest reply is "I can't control
the microphone — say 'stop voice' or tap the mode control", which requires the prompt to know
voice is active.
Fix
- Add bare
"stop","stop stop","stop listening"(and the equivalents in the other nine
languages already listed) toEXIT_BY_LANG. - Consider whether "stop" should mean exit voice or interrupt what is happening — they are
different. Mid-reply, a user saying "stop" most likely wants the TTS to shut up and the turn
abandoned, not to leave hands-free entirely.exitmay be the wrong verb to bind it to. - Teach the agent that voice is active so it stops confirming actions it cannot take. Derived from
state, not hardcoded prose (Prompt-drift check — three agents in two days told a story about themselves their capabilities contradicted #315).
Verification
- "Stop." as a whole utterance exits voice; "don't stop now" does not.
- The agent never claims to have stopped voice.
- Mid-TTS "stop" silences the reply rather than only unsubscribing from the next one.
Activity
serge-ivo commentedon Aug 6, 2026
Superseded in part by #333… correction: by #334. The owner has
"stop stop"configured as a stop-word, so the real failure was not "stop is not in EXIT_BY_LANG" — it was thatnormalizeTranscriptdoes not strip hyphens, and Whisper rendered the phrase as"Stop-stop.". See #334 for the measurement.What remains valid here: bare
"stop"still is not an exit phrase (only"stop voice"), and the agent still replies "Got it. Stopped." about client state it cannot see or control. Both worth fixing — but #334 is the one that explains the intermittency.fix(sdk): one normaliser for spoken text, so "Stop-stop." stops (#334, …
serge-ivo commentedon Aug 7, 2026
Voice half fixed in 3d7e28b; the prompt half is left open below.
"stop"and"stop stop"are now exit phrases inEXIT_BY_LANG, with equivalents in the other nine languages (停止 / やめて / 그만 / basta / arrête / aufhören / рuko …).On whether the bare word is safe: yes, and by construction rather than luck.
phraseMatchesTranscriptrequires a single-word phrase to BE the whole utterance — the rule added when"next agent"fired inside "the next agent in the chain is the builder" — so"don't stop now","stop the deploy when the tests go green"and"did it stop?"all stay messages. Tests pin those."stop stop"is not redundant with it: it normalises to two words, which the single-word rule can never match, and it is what the reported"Stop-stop."becomes after #334. As a multi-word phrase it can also match inside a longer utterance; a doubled imperative is distinctive enough for that, in the way "next agent" was not."stop listening"deliberately stays a MUTE phrase — it says literally what mute does, exit is checked first and would have stolen it, and silencing the mic is the smaller, recoverable reading.On the ticket's second bullet (interrupt vs exit): exit now cancels TTS immediately rather than after awaiting the hands-free teardown, so mid-reply "stop" silences the agent at once instead of talking over the answer to whether anything stopped.
Left open — the prompt half. "Teach the agent that voice is active so it stops confirming actions it cannot take" belongs in
workers/api(#315'slib/prompt-claims.tsis the right machinery: "Got it. Stopped." is a claim that contradicts reality, same class as #254/#259). That was another agent's lane this run, so it is untouched. Suggest tracking it as its own ticket against prompt-claims rather than reopening this one.fix(voice): a phrase you bound is yours, the agent cannot command its…