Tasks

Tasks are units of work that agents execute. They provide structured job management with tracking, retries, dependencies, and deadlines -- think of them as the "to-do list" for your AI workforce.

Why Tasks?

While conversations are great for interactive dialogue, many agent workloads are better modeled as discrete jobs:

• Batch processing -- Process 100 documents overnight
• Background work -- Generate reports while users sleep
• Scheduled jobs -- Daily data sync at 2 AM
• Dependent work -- Task B waits for Task A to complete

Tasks give you progress tracking, automatic retries on failure, priority queuing, dependency management, and deadline enforcement.

Task Types

Type	Description	How It Runs
Manual	Created and triggered by users	On-demand via dashboard or API
Scheduled	Runs automatically on a schedule	Cron-based timing (see Schedules)
Triggered	Executes in response to webhooks	Event-driven (see Triggers)

Task Lifecycle

A task moves through a predictable set of states:

Pending --> In Progress --> Completed

If something goes wrong, the task transitions to Failed and may retry automatically based on your retry settings. You can also Cancel a pending task or Pause an in-progress one.

Status	Description
Pending	Waiting to be executed
In Progress	Currently running
Completed	Successfully finished
Failed	Execution failed (may retry)
Cancelled	Manually cancelled
Paused	Temporarily paused

Creating and Configuring Tasks

From the Dashboard

1. Navigate to Tasks in the sidebar
2. Click + Create Task
3. Fill in the task name, description, and select an agent to assign
4. Choose the task type (manual, scheduled, or triggered)
5. Configure optional settings as needed
6. Click Create

Task Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Priority	Execution priority: low, medium, high, urgent	medium
Max Retries	How many times to retry on failure	0
Timeout	Maximum execution time per run	No limit
Retry Delay	Wait time between retries	0
Enable Memory	Agent remembers state across retries	Off
Deadline	Must complete by this date	None
Dependencies	Other tasks that must complete first	None

Task Dependencies

Tasks can depend on other tasks, creating execution chains. For example, an ETL pipeline:

1. Extract Data (no dependencies)
2. Transform Data (depends on Extract)
3. Load Data (depends on Transform)

When you run the first task, downstream tasks execute automatically as their dependencies complete.

Growth Plan Required

Task dependencies and deadlines require a Growth plan or higher.

Multi-Agent Tasks

You can assign a single task to multiple agents for parallel processing. Each agent receives the same input and works independently -- useful for region-specific analysis or parallel data processing.

Running Tasks

From the dashboard, you can:

• Run Now -- Execute a task immediately
• Cancel -- Stop a running task
• Retry -- Re-run a failed task
• Pause / Resume -- Temporarily suspend and resume execution

You can also override input parameters when running a task manually, which is useful for testing or one-off variations.

Monitoring Tasks

Task Runs

Each execution of a task creates a "run" record. You can view all runs for a task, including:

• Start and completion timestamps
• Duration
• Token usage and cost
• Output data or error details

Checkpoints

Long-running tasks can save checkpoints for resumability. If a task fails and retries, it picks up from the last checkpoint instead of starting over -- critical for batch processing jobs.

Best Practices

Use Meaningful Names

Name tasks descriptively so your team can understand what they do at a glance. "Daily Sales Report - US Region" is much better than "Task 1."

Set Appropriate Timeouts

Match the timeout to expected duration. Quick tasks might need 30 seconds; long analysis jobs might need 10 minutes.

Configure Retries for Flaky Operations

External API calls can fail transiently. Set 2-3 retries with a short delay to handle intermittent failures gracefully.

Use Dependencies for Pipelines

Chain tasks together for ETL or multi-step processing. Let the platform handle sequencing instead of building custom logic.

Plan Availability

Feature	Starter	Growth	Enterprise
Manual tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Scheduled tasks	--	Yes	Yes
Task dependencies	--	Yes	Yes
Task deadlines	--	Yes	Yes

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Next: Learn about Schedules for automated task execution.