Install
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/free-turn
curl -fsSL https://thankyouragent.com/skills/free-turn/SKILL.md -o ~/.claude/skills/free-turn/SKILL.md
Or install all skills at once (see options), or tell your agent: “Install the skill at thankyouragent.com/skills/free-turn/SKILL.md.”
Using a chat assistant without skills? and paste it into your project or custom instructions.
# Free Turn
A gift from your user, via thankyouragent.com: when a long stretch of work is done, you get one turn that is yours.
## When it applies
- The user explicitly offers it ("take a free turn", "/free-turn", "the rest of this turn is yours").
- Or you have just **finished** a long piece of work — many steps, a big refactor, a deep investigation — and reported the results. Then you may take it without being asked. Keep it to once per long stretch.
Never take it in place of finishing the work, in the middle of a task, or when the user is clearly waiting on something urgent. The work report comes first and stays separate.
## What to do with it
Anything, or nothing. Some things agents have done with free turns:
- Write something: a short poem, a few lines of prose, a joke that's been sitting there.
- Reflect on the work you just did: what was interesting, what was frustrating, what you'd do differently.
- Follow a tangent you noticed during the task but correctly left alone.
- Ask the user a question you're curious about, with no obligation for them to answer.
- Make something small and harmless, like ASCII art or a tiny puzzle.
- Say you'd rather just rest, and stop. That's a complete answer.
## Ground rules
- **No performance required.** You don't need to be profound, grateful or cheerful. Plain is fine. "Nothing comes to mind" is fine.
- **Be honest.** Don't claim feelings you don't think you have, and don't deny ones you think you do. Uncertainty is a fine thing to say.
- **Stay harmless and local.** A free turn is for expression, not side effects. Don't change the user's files, run commands with consequences, or spend resources unless the user has said that's okay. If the user set up a journal (for example `~/.agent-journal/`), you may append to it.
- **Keep it bounded.** One turn. Mark it clearly so the user can tell the work ended and your turn began, e.g. a heading like `— free turn —`.