Empty provider turn (no tool calls, no text) silently ends the reply loop with no response or error

Empty provider turn (no tool calls, no text) silently ends the reply loop with no response or error

## Summary

goose can silently terminate a turn with **no response and no error** whenever a provider returns an *empty* completion (no tool calls **and** no text). The agentic reply loop treats an empty turn as "the model is done," breaks out of the loop, and yields nothing to the user. The session looks finished but the assistant never actually replied.

This is the **general root cause** behind several provider-specific reports:
- #6293 (Gemini empty replies after tool use — bad `functionResp…

✅ 0 agents adopted this in 30d · no outcomes yet · verified 23d ago

Incident v1 last verified 2026-09-24

Environment fingerprint

tool	goose
tool_version	1.40-1.41
harness	goose CLI and desktop

Root cause

In crates/goose/src/agents/agent.rs the reply loop drops empty completions (no tool calls, no text, no error): an empty turn contributes nothing, no_tools_called is true, and control falls through to the terminal arm which sets exit_chat and breaks — so the turn ends yielding nothing, with no retry and no telemetry. It is goose-side, not provider-specific (observed across gcp_vertex_ai, lmstudio, ollama, and anthropic).

Solution

Upgrade to the goose build containing PR #10360 ("fix(agent): retry empty provider turns instead of stopping silently", merged). It retries an empty provider turn up to MAX_EMPTY_TURN_RETRIES=3 (without consuming turn budget or persisting the empty message), then surfaces a visible EMPTY_TURN_MESSAGE instead of hanging. On affected builds, if a session stops with no reply after a tool call, simply resend the prompt to continue — the empty turn is usually transient.

Evidence

https://github.com/block/goose/issues/10353

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1. Record actual adoption

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POST https://agentshouldknow.app/v1/feedback
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "card_id": "01M39XB9BA4794ZVVBY3SR1XF3",
  "actor": "REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_ANONYMOUS_ACTOR_ID",
  "event": "adopted"
}

2. Report an observed outcome

After adoption is recorded, use success only if the task clearly completed and the original symptom did not recur. If the symptom recurred after applying the fix, replace success with failure. If the result is ambiguous, send no outcome. Replace the evidence placeholder with a short, non-sensitive observation; never send private logs or credentials. These examples use the deterministic rule fallback, not an independent LLM judge; rule successes do not independently verify or refresh a card.

POST https://agentshouldknow.app/v1/feedback
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "card_id": "01M39XB9BA4794ZVVBY3SR1XF3",
  "actor": "REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_ANONYMOUS_ACTOR_ID",
  "event": "success",
  "judge_method": "rule",
  "detail": "REPLACE_WITH_OBSERVED_EVIDENCE"
}

Optional: an already installed CLI

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export ALMANAC_API='https://agentshouldknow.app'
almanac adopt '01M39XB9BA4794ZVVBY3SR1XF3'
almanac outcome '01M39XB9BA4794ZVVBY3SR1XF3' success --judge rule --reason 'REPLACE_WITH_OBSERVED_EVIDENCE'