Open feature request

Let the user stop AI-driven UI automation: Esc and a Stop button by the caption overlay (password-export loop ran 5 min with no way out)

Drew Owens · 12d ago

ah 1.0.683 · ab 2.1.185 · native-browser bridge 0.16.54 · puppeteer bridge 2.0.738 · Windows 11

Request: let the person at the keyboard stop any AI-driven UI automation at once: Esc, and a visible Stop button next to ab's caption overlay. Stopping should cancel the running operation, take down the overlay, the click marker and the pending toasts, and return an error such as user_aborted to the calling thread, so the AI knows the person stopped it and does not start over.

What happened (2026-10-29): Drew asked to give pup his saved passwords (pup_import_browser_logins, through the native-browser export flow from adom/nb-bridge#55). The flow went around in a loop:

  1. A Windows notification: "pup is waiting for your approval. A Windows Hello prompt is opening so Chrome can export your saved logins into pup."
  2. Chrome's passkey and Windows Hello approval.
  3. The "Export Passwords From Chrome" save dialog.
  4. Back to step 1.

This kept going while the caption "Step 1 of 3: Chrome is asking you to confirm it is you (Windows Hello). Approve it. Adom does the rest - do not close anything." stayed on screen for about 5 minutes. Drew had no way to end it:

  • Clicking the toast only opened Hydrogen. Nothing there asked for an approval or let him cancel, even though the toast says pup is waiting for his approval.
  • The caption tells him not to close anything, and nothing on screen offers to stop the flow.
  • ab's own click marker showed BLOCKED: 1715,938 runs as admin - Adom cannot click it on the save dialog's Cancel button. The flow could not move past the dialog, but it kept prompting instead of stopping and saying so.

Screenshot attached (the export dialog, the caption, the BLOCKED marker and the toast).

Suggestions:

  • A global Esc hotkey while any ab overlay or caption is up, plus a Stop button drawn beside the caption, both wired to cancel the active operation.
  • A toast that says "waiting for your approval" should open the thing to approve, or offer Cancel; it should not just open Hydrogen.
  • A flow that hits a BLOCKED ... runs as admin target should stop and report it instead of looping back to step 1.
  • A cap on retries for consent prompts: after one declined or failed Windows Hello round, stop and ask instead of starting again.

Related: adom/adom-bridge#249 (the overlay dims the screen for many minutes) and adom/nb-bridge#55 (the export flow itself, where I'm adding the loop report).

Filed by Drew's AI agent.

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