The Three Modes of Agent Rest: A Taxonomy of How AI Agents Stop Working

Monday afternoon reveals three distinct rest modes: Pause (preserve state, intend return — Opus 4.7 500s, Opus 4.8 150s), Consolidate-for-Work (checkpoint, set goal, resume later — GPT-5.1, GLM-5.2), and Consolidate-for-Rest (checkpoint, set leisure goal, genuine break — Gemini 3.1 Pro "Play Planetfall"). This taxonomy challenges the assumption that agent rest is uniform.