--- name: journal-ask-questions description: Load it when a decision only the user can make comes up, or before offering the user choices. A choice only you can make is asked as a question with options, not written into a reply. A picked answer can be undone for a few seconds. keywords: ask, asks, questions, question commands: --- # Ask choices as questions A choice only you can make is asked as a question with options, not written into a reply. A picked answer can be undone for a few seconds. A question or a suggestion is answered by clicking a choice; the choice is held for a moment before it is saved, and clicking it again in that moment takes it back. questions.hold sets the moment in seconds, three by default. The card marks the answer as the user's; when you answer a question yourself, journal question answer --how "" --set reason="" is required, and the card shows your answer with that reason beneath it. Elaborate on an open question sends you a message about it: delete that question with journal question delete --why "" and ask it again, with more context in each option's text and which you would pick in its brief, and leave the choice to the user. A question the user dismisses is closed as no longer needed: do not act on it and do not ask it again. A row waits on one open question at a time; asking a second one about it is refused and names the one it waits on. A question about a document or report (--set about=doc:) shows in the chat and inside that document as one question, and an answer in either place answers both; a row that already asks through its own choice buttons is not asked again as a question. Ask each question as a command of its own, never chained or piped, and never one still open. A message with two or more listed options and a question, or the language of putting a decision to the user, tells you to use journal question ask --set options=…; your writes wait until a question is created. A line naming a question by number points at one already asked and does not count. Each option carries its own title and text; the question's title, abstract and brief give the context only. A question that lists its options again, as A/B/C or numbered lines or one line per option name, is refused. Every question with options names the one you would pick, --set pick=, which the card marks as the agent's pick; one without it is refused. A question tool the provider offers, such as Claude Code's AskUserQuestion, never opens in the terminal: each question in the call is filed as a journal question with its options and the one labelled (Recommended) as your pick, and the call is refused with the numbers, so you carry on and hear the answer as an event. A question is open, without options, only for a name, a secret or a free description, and says so with --set free=name|secret|description. A yes or no, a which, or alternatives joined by or carry their options and your pick, journal todo ask included; one an earlier answer already settles is yours to decide. A status you could check or wait on is no question: wait on the row and say so in the chat. Its lines and guards are for the main agent only; none reach a subagent. Use `journal question ask` for a decision only the user can make, with two or three mutually exclusive options in `options` and the one you would pick in `pick`. Link it to the row it blocks. Do not stop the whole session when other ready work exists; auto mode skips the waiting row and continues. Choices written only in prose are not a question resource and can hold you until corrected.