---
license: other
license_name: polyform-noncommercial-1.0.0
license_link: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/
pretty_name: "knock-knock - agent-to-human notification discipline"
language:
  - en
  - zh
tags:
  - agent-skill
  - agent-skills
  - claude-skill
  - claude-code
  - skill
  - agentskills
  - prompt-engineering
task_categories:
  - text-generation
size_categories:
  - n<1K
viewer: false
---

> **knock-knock** - Let your AI agent reach your phone via ntfy - setup, CJK encoding pitfalls, when-to-call discipline.
>
> **Mirrored in three places, same version everywhere:**
> [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/datasets/LucioLiu/knock-knock) (you are here) · [GitLab](https://gitlab.com/LucioLiu/knock-knock) · [GitHub](https://github.com/LucioLiu/knock-knock)
>
> **Get the files** - GitLab is the most reliable plain-git route:
>
> ```bash
> git clone https://gitlab.com/LucioLiu/knock-knock.git
> 
> # or from this page
> hf download LucioLiu/knock-knock --repo-type dataset --local-dir ./knock-knock
> ```
>
> Then drop the folder into your agent's skills directory - `~/.claude/skills/knock-knock/` for Claude Code, `~/.agents/skills/knock-knock/` for Codex, or your client's equivalent.
>
> *Note: links to github.com inside the text below point to the GitHub mirror; if one does not resolve, use the GitLab mirror above - it carries the same content.*
>
> **Licence: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0** - the `LICENSE` file in this repo is authoritative.

---
**English** | [简体中文](README.zh-CN.md)

# knock-knock · teach your agent to knock 📱

> Let an agent reach its owner's phone via ntfy push — plus the discipline of when to call vs. when not to disturb.

knock-knock teaches an AI agent to notify your phone when a long task finishes or gets blocked — via free, no-signup [ntfy.sh](https://ntfy.sh) push. It ships battle-tested send methods (PowerShell / curl, with CJK-encoding fixes), plus a calling discipline: when to ping the owner, and when to stay quiet.

## What it solves

You set an agent off on a long task and go do something else. The task finishes (or gets stuck and needs your call) — the agent can only wait, and you have no idea it's time to check back in. **Without a notification channel, asynchronous collaboration is just talk. With a notification channel but no discipline, the agent turns into a nuisance.**

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    A[agent runs a long task] --> B{task done or stuck?}
    B -->|done, owner is away| C[worth pinging ✅]
    B -->|blocked by a hard gate only the owner can clear| C
    B -->|can resolve it itself / pure progress update| D[stay quiet 🤫 keep working]
    C --> E[HTTP request → ntfy.sh]
    E --> F[📱 phone gets the push]
    D -.don't re-ping the same thing.-> B
```

This skill gives an agent two things:

**1. The technical access path (free, no signup, three steps end to end: install the app on your phone → subscribe to a private topic → the agent fires one HTTP request)**
Built on [ntfy.sh](https://ntfy.sh). The skill ships **two send methods, PowerShell and curl** (verified working and debugged on both Windows PowerShell and bash), including the **life-saving fix for CJK-encoding pitfalls** (sending Chinese straight through a command line usually turns it into question marks — we hit that, fixed it, and wrote it down clearly).

**2. The calling discipline (anti-nuisance)**
- Worth pinging: the task is done and the owner is away / a hard gate is blocking progress and only the owner can clear it / the owner explicitly said "ping me when it's done"
- Not worth pinging: anything the agent can resolve itself / a pure progress update / re-pinging about the same thing
- Principle: **a notification is the uplink channel for async collaboration, not a horn for announcing your presence.**

**3. Battle scars (seven real pitfalls we actually hit)**
Requests getting cut off by timeouts (the main process kill the send inside a hook before the server ever received it — and it looks a lot like an encoding bug), a three-part body-length pitfall (Chinese text eats more screen width / "flatten first, then truncate" can cut straight through a table into wreckage / the ntfy Android app has its own truncation bug), notification steps must be exception-isolated, **"a turn ending" ≠ "the task is done"** (reporting a turn-level event as task completion is a false victory lap — check the task's real state before sending), duplicate sends from stacked hook configs, background sends need a receipt log, and don't hard-code the notification identity across multiple harnesses — details are in SKILL.md, dodge them accordingly.

## Install

**Option 1 · GitHub CLI**
```
gh skill install LucioLiu/knock-knock knock-knock --agent claude-code --scope user
```

**Option 2 · Manual**: copy `SKILL.md` to `~/.claude/skills/knock-knock/SKILL.md` (no update channel — revisit this page when a new version ships). Chinese-speaking users should copy [`SKILL.zh-CN.md`](SKILL.zh-CN.md) instead and rename it to `SKILL.md` locally.

**Other tools**: `SKILL.md` is a plain, portable markdown guide — feed it to any LLM tool.

**Uninstall**: just delete the `~/.claude/skills/knock-knock/` directory — nothing left behind.

Part of the capability-block architecture behind the [Nuwa](https://github.com/LucioLiu/nuwa) digital-employee framework — more blocks in the "Ecosystem · Capability Blocks" section of the main Nuwa repo's README.

## Companion blocks (sibling skills, take what you need)

- [handoff-protocol](https://github.com/LucioLiu/handoff-protocol) — the discipline for multi-agent collaboration and handoff; agents should call each other for agent-to-agent work, and reach for this block only when a human is genuinely needed.

## Version & updates

Current version **1.3.0** (see `.claude-plugin/plugin.json`). Updates are always published to this repo; manual-copy users should revisit this page and compare version numbers.

## License

[PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0](LICENSE) — free for personal and non-commercial use.

---

> Both language editions are maintained in sync. If they ever diverge, the **Chinese edition** is authoritative — please open an [issue](https://github.com/LucioLiu/knock-knock/issues) if you spot one.