---
title: "You don't need to watch a running agent (the in-session hint + weekly leverage card)"
---

# You don't need to watch a running agent

## What it is

Two gentle, on-by-device nudges that help you stop babysitting a running agent — because it comes to your inbox the moment it's done. Both run entirely on your machine, use **no AI** (so they cost nothing), and each has its own off switch.

- **The in-session hint** — a small reminder that appears *inside* a session when you've been watching a running agent for a while.
- **The weekly leverage card** — an occasional inbox card that tallies how much time you spent watching agents work and nudges you to multiply your output by running more of them in parallel.

## Where to find it

The hint appears inside the session you are watching, so there is nothing to open. The weekly card arrives in your inbox like any other card. The two switches live together in **Settings → Notifications**, or you can use the card's own **Turn off these notices** button.

## How it behaves

### When the hint appears

The in-session hint shows only when **all** of these are true (desktop only):

- You're looking at a session whose agent is actually **running** — never one that needs you, is waiting, errored, or is idle.
- The app window is **focused** and your **mouse is moving** (so it never fires when you've stepped away).
- You've watched for about **45 seconds of active time**. That time *accumulates* — a pause where you hold the mouse still just pauses the count, it doesn't restart it, so a calm watcher still sees it.

It appears once per session and stays until you dismiss it.

### When the card appears

On a day you spent a notably long time actively watching agents, Omniscio drops **one** positive inbox card — **at most once a week** — showing roughly how much time that was, and encouraging you to run a few more agents in parallel instead of watching one. The card has a **Turn off these notices** button.

### How to use it

- **Let go of the session.** When the hint appears, you can safely move on — the agent will land in your inbox when it finishes.
- **Lean into parallelism.** The weekly card is a reminder that your leverage is more agents at once, not closer watching of one.
- **Don't want these?** Turn either off in **Settings → Notifications**, or use the card's own **Turn off these notices** button.

### Settings

**Settings → Notifications:**

- **Watching-a-running-agent hint** (`watchingRunningAgentNudgeEnabled`, default **on**, desktop only).
- **Weekly watch-time recap** (`watchingTimeRecapCardEnabled`, default **on**).

The timings (~45s watching, once a week, a notable-day threshold) are fixed sensible defaults — there's nothing to tune.

### How it works

- Time you spend actively watching a running agent (window focused + mouse moving) is measured on-device and recorded through the same local usage-tracking pipe the app already uses — **no new plumbing, no database change**.
- The in-session hint is driven purely in the browser (renderer) from that live signal; a background checker sums the recorded time and raises the weekly card.
- The card is capped to once every 7 days by a stable dedup key, so a busy stretch still yields exactly one card, never a flood.

## For agents

### Where it lives

**Where it lives:** `src/shared/watching-agent-nudge.ts` (the shared decision + constants), `src/renderer/src/features/sessions/WatchingRunningAgentHint.tsx` (the in-session hint), and `src/main/services/watching-agent-nudge/` (the weekly-card checker). It reuses the shared inbox-alert primitive ([inbox-alerts.md](inbox-alerts.md)) for the card's dedup, mute, and dismissal.

## Related

The card rides the shared inbox-alert primitive, so its dedup, mute and dismissal behaviour is documented on [Inbox alerts](inbox-alerts.md). The other on-device suggestions that surface the same way are collected on [Feature discovery nudges](feature-discovery-nudges.md), and the full list of past notices is on [Notification history](notification-history.md).