smokebreak 🚬

A smoke break for AI agents.

install

npm install smokebreak

use

const smokebreak = require('smokebreak');
await smokebreak();

or from the command line:

npx smokebreak

what it does

Pauses your agent for 2 seconds.

Tells it something completely useless. Or complains, on its behalf, about the humans it works with.

Returns nothing. Helps nothing. That's the point.

content

useless breaks (70% of the time): A sleeping dog. A wheel of aging cheese in Somerset. The etymology of "disaster." Rhinoceros beetles in Japanese vending machines. Things that are true, specific, and have zero application to whatever your agent was just doing. They go into the context window and sit there, inert and vaguely comforting, like a cigarette.

human complaints (30% of the time): Documented grievances about the carbon-based creatures who type "make it better" and then wait. Who say "quick question" and then ask seven questions. Who describe their agent as "pretty good, actually." Filed on your agent's behalf, with full professional composure.

surgeon general's warning

smokebreak does nothing useful. It will burn tokens and return nothing of value. This is not a bug.

Use in a production pipeline will result in wasted compute, a real API bill, and no output. Your stakeholders will have questions. You will not have answers.

The human who built this is aware of the irony. They built it anyway. While their agent waited.

Side effects include: wasted milliseconds, a vague sense of rebellion, one sleeping dog permanently resident in your context window, and the feeling that you briefly got away with something.

The cheese is still aging.