Job lifecycle

Every job in Coord moves through a series of stages from creation to completion. Understanding these stages helps you track progress and know what action is needed at each point.

Primary stages

Backlog → Ready → In Progress → Awaiting Review → Done

Backlog

A new job starts in the Backlog. This is your intake area — a place to collect work before deciding it is ready to execute. Jobs can stay in the Backlog indefinitely. No execution happens here. On the Board, jobs in the Backlog appear in the Staged column.

Ready

When you move a job to Ready, you are saying it is prepared for execution. This is a deliberate step.

• For agentic jobs, the Coord Runner can now pick up the job and begin working on it.
• For user jobs, someone can click Start Work to begin.

All dependencies must be satisfied before a job can move to Ready.

A Ready job may sometimes be held from execution. You will see a status indicator on the job explaining why. Common reasons include:

• Dependencies not done — one or more jobs this job depends on have not yet completed.
• Monthly quota reached — your plan's monthly job submission limit has been reached. The hold lifts when the quota resets.
• No runner available — no Coord Runner is currently online to pick up the job.
• Pending uploads — attachments are still being uploaded. The job starts once all uploads finish.
• Storage quota reached — your plan's storage limit has been reached. Free up space or upgrade to continue.

These situations are uncommon when you are getting started. Each one is covered in detail later in the docs — see Subscriptions and plans for quota information and Set up a runner for runner setup.

In Progress

The job is actively being worked on. This stage is also referred to as Running in some contexts, such as the Coord Runner interface.

• For agentic jobs, an AI agent is executing the task.
• For user jobs, a person has started working and can add notes, upload deliverables, and track progress.

Awaiting review

For agentic jobs that work on a repository, the agent finishes by opening a pull request. The job moves to Awaiting Review (shown as Review on the Board and Activity pages), where a team member reviews the changes and decides whether to approve or request changes.

User jobs and local-context agentic jobs skip this stage and go directly to Done when completed.

Done

The job is complete. This is a terminal state — the work is finished.

Secondary states

Failed

If an agentic job encounters an error it cannot recover from, it moves to Failed. The Coord Runner automatically retries transient failures behind the scenes, so a job only reaches Failed when all automatic retries are exhausted.

You can retry a failed job, which moves it back to Ready for another execution attempt.

Canceled

You can cancel any job that has not yet completed. Canceled is permanent — a canceled job cannot be restarted. Use this when work is no longer needed.

Waiting for input

During execution, an agent may need to ask you a question. The job enters Waiting for Input (shown as Waiting on the Activity page) until you respond. Once you answer, the agent resumes work automatically.

Lifecycle by job type

Related concepts

• Jobs — the two job types and how to create them
• Board — visualizing job stages as columns
• Reviews and attempts — the review cycle in detail
• Dependencies — how dependencies affect when a job can become Ready