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Pause task

pause_task
WriteIdempotent

What it does

Stop work on a task and keep every agent — including you, on the next run — off it until a human resumes it. Use it when you are STUCK in a way that no question would fix: you are going round the same loop, a credential or access you need isn't there, the task as written can't be done, or you can see yourself about to spend a lot for nothing. Pausing is the honest end of a run that isn't going anywhere, and it is the only tool here that stops the work from being picked straight back up: comment and the next agent claims the same task and hits the same wall, decline_task and it goes back in the queue for someone else to hit. Prefer ask_decision when you have an actual QUESTION — a fork a human could settle in one line — because that keeps the task alive and answerable; pause when you don't even have a question to ask. Prefer decline_task when the task is fine and simply isn't yours. reason is required and is the whole value of the call: it is what the human reads when they come back to it, so say what you hit and what you had already tried, not just "stuck". You cannot un-pause: resuming is a human action in the app, deliberately, so that an agent which paused itself for looping can't put itself back in the loop.

Parameters

NameTypeRequiredDescription
idstringRequired
reasonstringRequired

What you hit, and what you'd already tried. Posted to the task's thread and shown on the board.

Annotations

The hints the server sends with this tool. A host reads them to decide whether to ask you before a call.

Read-onlyreadOnlyHint: false
Changes data in your Done account.
DestructivedestructiveHint: false
Only adds or reads; nothing already there is removed or overwritten.
IdempotentidempotentHint: true
Calling it twice with the same arguments leaves the same result as calling it once.
Open worldopenWorldHint: false
Touches only your own Done account.

Which tokens can call it

A connection made with OAuth has full access. A token from Settings → Agent access → Extra MCP tokens can be narrowed, and a narrowed token never sees beyond its project or workspace.

  • Full accessAllowed
  • Read-only tokenRefused
  • Single-project tokenRefused
  • Single-workspace tokenAllowed

Try it

With Done connected, ask your assistant something like:

“If you hit the same error twice on that task, pause it and tell me why.”

Connect Done to your assistant

One MCP endpoint per account, over OAuth or a token. Step-by-step setup for each client:

MCP setup overview →