AskUserQuestion tool

[EdanStarfire]

Anyone been able to trigger the AskUserQuestion tool via SDK? I'm not even sure how to begin there, but was hoping someone had had some luck. It seems like it should be either a new callback or a modification of the can_use_tool permission, or (even possibly) an in-code hook of the AskUserQuestion matcher that handles it and returns results, but I cannot get the SDK to even attempt to use the tool even though I can easily in basic CC.

[moarshy]

same question

[rocky-terracotta]

Looks like it's just been added to the SDK

[thenewpeople]

same question

[hack-gibson]

Did anybody ever get resolution on this? I'm still having a ton of issues getting this to fire

[EdanStarfire]

For a while it was working directly through the permission prompt flow. I noticed it doesn't fire anymore, but hadn't noticed it was re-disabled. It was working fine through the prompt flow, but not sure if they changed it under the hood too much to keep it there in the sdk

[jerbob92]

I would like to see this as well.

[hack-gibson]

@EdanStarfire what do you mean when you say 'the prompt flow'. Can you ELI5?

For now my workaround is a custom MCP tool but I don't like the unnecessary overhead and would prefer to use Claude's native AUQ

[EdanStarfire]

It was coming through the can_use_tool callback with a questions array. You would then "approve" it with the suggestions having the answers in them. You could also pass a free text answer response on each question. But I haven't seen it in a while, so likely has been moved to a different process or deprecated that path.

[jerbob92]

@EdanStarfire That actually works for me, my issue is that it can't be called through sub-agents.

You can find examples on how to implement this here:
https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/python#ask-user-question
https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/user-input#question-format

With a complete example here:
https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/user-input#complete-example

However, I don't really see the agent calling the tool, but when I specifically ask it to it will ask me a question.

[EdanStarfire]

Yeah. I think that's a side effect of subagents being one-shot kings. If that's your goal here, that likely needs its own issue. Subagents asking questions is explicitly called out as not supported in the link you sent, and this issue was focused on getting support at all for the function, which is now there. I don't think I've ever seen subagents even in the regular CC tui, so this may not be an SDK thing at all.

[jerbob92]

@EdanStarfire I had my own issue: #696
It got closed in favor of this issue...

Anyway, you might be right, but there seems to be something wrong with this tool anyway since it doesn't really get triggered. It might not work in sub-agents because of how Claude Code works with sub-agents and interrupts, but I don't really see why it wouldn't work for sub-agents in the SDK.

For now I went the same route as @hack-gibson to use the SDK MCP tool solution, this causes it to also be available to sub-agents and would probably be called more often.

I used the "same" schema as the AskUserQuestion tool schema, but with the addition to also ask open questions. Here is the tool definition:

    @tool("ask_user_question", "Allows you to ask the user one or more questions. These questions can be freeform but also (multi) select.", {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
            "questions": {
                "description": "Questions to ask the user",
                "type": "array",
                "items": {
                    "type": "object",
                    "properties": {
                        "question": {
                            "type": "string",
                            "description": "The complete question to ask the user",
                        },
                        "header": {
                            "type": "string",
                            "description": "Very short label displayed as a chip/tag (max 12 chars)",
                        },
                        "type": {
                            "type": "string",
                            "description": "The type of the question. `options` gives the user a set of predefined options with the ability to add extra details. `text` just displays a text box to the user.",
                            "enum": [
                                "options",
                                "text",
                            ]
                        },
                        "options": {
                            "description": "The available choices, required when `type` is `options`.",
                            "type": "array",
                            "items": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "label": {
                                        "type": "string",
                                        "description": "Display text for this option",
                                    },
                                    "description": {
                                        "type": "string",
                                        "description": "Explanation of what this option means",
                                    }
                                },
                                "required": [
                                    "label",
                                    "description"
                                ],
                            }
                        },
                        "multiSelect": {
                            "description": "Whether the user can select multiple options when `type` is `options`.",
                            "type": "boolean",
                        }
                    },
                    "required": [
                        "question",
                        "header",
                        "type"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        "required": [
            "questions"
        ]
    })
    async def ask_user_question(args: dict[str, Any]) -> dict[str, Any]:
        # Implement your question logic here.
        return {
            "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "Insert answers here"}]
        }