deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness · error · Error

approval.request() outside an open turn: the approval/asked

Error message

approval.request() outside an open turn: the approval/asked + approval/decided audit pair must be turn-enclosed (a bare event between turns is crash-tail garbage on reload). Ask from inside the turn that needs the decision.

What it means

Error "approval.request() outside an open turn: the approval/asked + approval/decided audit pair must be turn-enclosed (a bare event between turns is crash-tail garbage on reload). Ask from inside the turn that needs the decision." thrown in deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness.

Source

Thrown at packages/interaction/user-approval/src/index.ts:260

   * The request requires an open turn because the audit pair must be enclosed
   * by the durable log's commit/replay boundary; an idle ask rejects before
   * appending anything. The answerer phase always produces an outcome: an
   * aborted signal yields `'cancelled'`, a missing or throwing answerer yields
   * `'unavailable'` (fail closed), and a rogue non-vocabulary return value is
   * normalized to `'unavailable'`. A failure that prevents either audit append
   * from committing still rejects because returning an unlogged decision would
   * violate the pair. Session contains post-commit observer failures, so an
   * authoritative append cannot reject the request or suppress its matching
   * audit event.
   * @param req - the pending decision (agent, tool identity, reason, signal).
   * @returns the closed outcome; `'allowed-once'` is the only grant.
   * @throws when no turn is open or either audit event fails before the session
   *   append commit point.
   */
  async request(req: ApprovalRequest): Promise<ApprovalOutcome> {
    const session = req.agent.session
    if (!hasOpenTurn(session.events)) {
      throw new Error(
        'approval.request() outside an open turn: the approval/asked + approval/decided audit pair '
        + 'must be turn-enclosed (a bare event between turns is crash-tail garbage on reload). '
        + 'Ask from inside the turn that needs the decision.',
      )
    }
    const id = ApprovalRequestId(randomUUID())
    session.append('approval/asked', {
      id,
      toolName: req.toolName,
      ...req.callId !== undefined ? { callId: req.callId } : {},
      ...req.reason !== undefined ? { reason: req.reason } : {},
    })
    const outcome = await this.decide(req, session)
    session.append('approval/decided', { id, outcome })
    return outcome
  }

  /**

View on GitHub (pinned to b150a551b8)

Solutions

1. Call approval.request() from inside the turn that needs the decision so the approval/asked and approval/decided events stay turn-enclosed.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/interaction/user-approval/src/index.ts:260 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness@b150a551b8 (2026-08-24). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3e6a52364928c0ab. Report an issue: GitHub.