Auto-Wake
The automatic transition of a paused AI agent back to a running state when it receives new work.
Auto-Wake
Auto-wake is the automatic transition of a paused agent back into a running state when new work is submitted to it. It is the counterpart to idle auto-pause: where auto-pause suspends an agent that has gone quiet, auto-wake brings it back the moment it is needed again, without requiring an operator to manually resume it first.
How it works
When a task is submitted to an agent that is currently paused, the platform detects the state and performs a resume transition before dispatching the task, rather than rejecting the submission or requiring a separate resume call. The agent's container is started, or its process state restored, using the data retained from when it was paused, so its history and configuration are unchanged. From the caller's perspective, submitting a task looks the same whether the target agent was already running or paused.
Why it matters
Without auto-wake, idle auto-pause would create friction: every caller, whether a human using a console or a script calling an API, would need to check an agent's state, resume it if necessary, and only then submit work, adding a coordination step to every interaction. Auto-wake removes that step, so pausing idle agents to save compute does not come at the cost of a more complicated integration surface. It also matters for automated systems, such as scheduled jobs, that submit tasks to agents on a schedule and should not need special case logic for agents that happen to be paused.
Auto-wake vs manual resume
Auto-wake is triggered implicitly by a task submission, while a manual resume is an explicit action an operator takes on purpose, independent of whether any work is waiting. Both end in the same running state, but auto-wake is meant for the common case of an agent that paused only because it ran out of work, not because anything is wrong with it. If an agent is paused for a reason that needs attention, such as after being archived or recovered from an error, a caller typically resumes it explicitly rather than relying on auto-wake alone.
Auto-wake in Agenhood
In Agenhood, an agent that has auto-paused due to inactivity wakes automatically the next time a task is submitted to it, whether that submission comes from the web console, the REST API, or an external system integrating with Agenhood. This pairs directly with idle auto-pause: the two behaviors together let an operator run a large number of agents while only paying for active compute when an agent is actually doing work.