Currently the player character will continue to perform certain actions that take multiple turns to complete until he/she is interrupted by a monster attacking him/her. These actions include stuff like cooking, reading books, smithing, making rations, digging, eating, fletching, etc.
I think it acceptable to expect the game to query the player whether the character should continue with his/her current actions whenever the character sees a hostile monster and not only once the monster attacks the PC. Even maybe with a configuration variable similar to the walk_carefully one. Of course when the player answers yes the action should continue until the character is attacked and not query the player on every turn, but this point is also definitely debatable. Maybe there can be 3 possible answers. Stop, continue for one turn and ask me again, just continue until I'm attacked.