tweak: background agent prompting to avoid polling issues (#30790)

packages/opencode/src/tool/task.ts

@@ -29,14 +29,15 @@ const BACKGROUND_DESCRIPTION = [
   "You will be notified automatically when it finishes.",
 ].join(" ")
 const BACKGROUND_STARTED = [
-  "Background task started. You will be notified automatically when it finishes.",
-  "Do not poll for progress, ask the task for status, or duplicate its work by investigating the same files or topic yourself.",
-  "Continue only with non-overlapping work, or briefly tell the user what you launched and stop.",
+  "The task is working in the background. You will be notified automatically when it finishes.",
+  "Do not poll for progress, ask the task for status, or duplicate this task's work — avoid working with the same files or topics it is using.",
+  "Work on non-overlapping tasks, or briefly tell the user what you launched and end your response.",
 ].join("\n")
 const BACKGROUND_UPDATED = [
   "Additional context sent to the running background task.",
-  "The task is still running; wait for the automatic completion notification.",
-  "Do not poll for progress or duplicate its work.",
+  "The task is still working in the background. You will be notified automatically when it finishes.",
+  "Do not poll for progress, ask the task for status, or duplicate this task's work — avoid working with the same files or topics it is using.",
+  "Work on non-overlapping tasks, or briefly tell the user what you sent and end your response.",
 ].join("\n")
 
 const BaseParameterFields = {

packages/opencode/src/tool/task.txt

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ When NOT to use the Task tool:
 
 Usage notes:
 1. Launch multiple agents concurrently whenever possible, to maximize performance; to do that, use a single message with multiple tool uses
-2. Once you have delegated work to an agent, do not duplicate that work yourself. Continue with non-overlapping tasks, or wait for the result.
+2. Once you have delegated work to an agent, do not duplicate that work yourself. Continue with non-overlapping tasks, or wait for the result. For background tasks, you will be notified automatically when the result is ready.
 3. When the agent is done, it will return a single message back to you. The result returned by the agent is not visible to the user. To show the user the result, you should send a text message back to the user with a concise summary of the result. The output includes a task_id you can reuse later to continue the same subagent session.
 4. Each agent invocation starts with a fresh context unless you provide task_id to resume the same subagent session (which continues with its previous messages and tool outputs). When starting fresh, your prompt should contain a highly detailed task description for the agent to perform autonomously and you should specify exactly what information the agent should return back to you in its final and only message to you.
 5. The agent's outputs should generally be trusted