Flare

Let an agent tell you what it found while it is still working, instead of only in the message that ends its turn.

What you get

• Agents get a flare tool. They send a flare when they confirm something, make a decision you might redirect, hit a blocker or finish a phase of a long task. The tool's instructions tell them when, and to draw the evidence as a table, chart or diagram instead of describing it, so asking "send a flare when you find the cause" in a prompt is enough.
• A flare is fire and forget. The tool writes one row and returns at once with "Flare sent. Keep working"; nothing replies, and the agent's turn never waits on it. When a flare cannot be sent, the agent gets a short note to send it again later, never an error.
• The newest flare of the current turn shows in a banner above the message box: its kind, its title, how long ago, and how many more arrived. Click the title for the detail, open the Flares tab, or dismiss it until the next flare.
• The Flares tab in the thread's side panel shows every flare the way bb shows a reply, so a chart, a page or a diagram any installed plugin draws appears there, with no setup. Cards switches to Flare's own list, grouped by turn, and Copy all copies the lot as Markdown.
• A thread's banner and tab also show the flares of every thread it started, such as minions and delegates, each with a link to its child thread.
• Blockers, and flares the agent marks urgent, send a push notification through bb's push notifications plugin. A thread you muted there is never notified.
• When a child thread sends a blocker, its parent's agent also gets it as a note while the parent's turn is running, so an orchestrator can change course. Flare never starts a turn to deliver it.
• When a turn fails, its row in the Flares tab says so, with the error, so the last flare tells you where the agent got to.
• bb flare send, bb flare list and flare_list send and read flares from a terminal or an agent. The palette command Flare: show this thread's flares opens the tab.

How rich flares work

bb draws plugin blocks only in assistant messages, so Flare keeps a hidden companion thread for each thread with flares, on Flare's own renderer: a provider that runs no model. Each flare comes back there word for word as an assistant message, and the Flares tab shows that thread. A companion costs no tokens or money, reuses its thread's environment, tells nobody when its turns end, and goes when its thread goes. Flare therefore appears in bb's provider list; it is not an agent.

Settings

• Push notifications: blockers and urgent flares (the default), every flare, or none.
• Notify with the last flare when a turn fails: off by default.
• Tell the parent agent: blockers and urgent flares (the default), every flare, or none. The parent's banner and tab show every child flare either way.
• Remind a quiet agent after (minutes): off (0) by default. When a turn runs this long without a flare, Flare adds a short reminder to it, at most three per turn, and only to a turn that is already running. Remind child threads too extends this to minions and delegates.
• Flares tab shows: rendered like a reply (the default), or plain cards, which starts no companion.
• Keep flares for (days): 30 by default.

Limits

• An agent sees the tool from its next session. A thread that was already running when you installed Flare gets it once its agent restarts.
• The timeline row for each call reads "Sent a flare". The banner shows the prose of a body; its views are in the tab.
• A view that loads a file from thread storage finds it when the flare names it as $BB_THREAD_STORAGE/<path>; workspace files work as they do in a reply.
• Flares stay in the plugin's own database on your bb server; no account or external service is needed. Push notifications go through bb's push notifications plugin when it is on.
• Needs bb 0.48.1 or later.