Long-running work
How a room shows each step while an agent works, how longer work runs as jobs you can follow, steer and stop, and the limits every job runs under.
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Work that takes minutes, shown where you asked for it
Some requests are answered in a reply. Others are real work: research across many sources, an audit, a plan, a set of drafts. A team room shows both kinds as they happen, in the conversation where you asked, so you never wait on a spinner wondering whether anything is going on.
Two things carry this:
- Live steps. While an agent works on a message, the room lists what it is doing, one line per action.
- Jobs. When the work is bigger than a reply, the room's lead splits it into jobs that run in the background, each on its own card, while your composer stays free.
Live steps while an agent works
As soon as an agent starts on your message, its actions appear under the conversation, grouped under the agent's name. Each line names one action:
| Line | What the agent is doing |
|---|---|
| Choosing who takes this | The lead is picking the teammate for the work |
| Passing this to DRIS | The lead handed the work to a teammate, named here |
| Choosing what to do | Picking which of its skills or tools fits |
| Deciding what to look up | Planning the lookups it needs |
| Looking up ... | Running one lookup, named by the tool |
| Reading what came back | Reading the results |
| Choosing who does what | Splitting the work between teammates |
| Writing the answer | Writing its reply |
| Waiting on an approval | A step needs a person; the held card is in the room |
A line in progress ends in an ellipsis. A finished line ends in "done", and one that failed ends in "did not work".
When the reply has posted, the lines fold away under your message as a count, such as 5 steps. Open it to read them again. They stay until your next message or until you reload the page; they are narration, not part of the room's record. The room's record of what was looked up is the message the agent posts with its sources.
Jobs: longer work in the background
When you ask the lead for work that needs more than a quick lookup, or a deliverable such as a plan, brief, audit, research or a draft, the lead can start it as jobs. It splits the work by teammate or by subtask, and the jobs run side by side.
The lead's note says what started:
Starting 2 jobs:
- NORA: find ten companies that fit the ICP and are hiring for AI roles
- RIVA: list the open deals with no activity in the last two weeks
Follow each one on its card below. When they finish I review what they found and post the result here.
A teammate whose work would need a person's approval at every step is not started. The note names it under "Not started, because their work needs a person's approval first:".
A job can also start on a schedule. When an agent's trigger is set to run as a room job, each fire starts one job for that agent in its team room, and the lead's note opens with "Scheduled job from" and the trigger's name. Since no person asked for it, it does not appear in anyone's Inbox. See an agent's triggers.
Reading a job's card
Each job has its own card under the note:
- the agent and a status;
- how long it has been running, ticking while it works;
- the job it was given;
- the newest step it took;
- Show steps, with the count, which opens the job's log one line per step. A step with an input or a result, such as a tool call, opens further to show its Input and Result. Hide steps folds the log again.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued | Waiting for a free slot to start |
| Running | Working through its steps |
| Needs approval | Paused on a call a person must approve |
| Done | Finished and reported |
| Failed | Ended on an error; what it had is written up |
| Stopped | A person stopped it |
| Timed out | Reached its time or step limit |
Giving direction while jobs run
Reply in the job's thread. The room tells you "The running jobs will read this at their next step." Every running job reads your reply and carries on with it in mind. Your reply does not start new work.
If your reply ends in a question mark, or names the lead with @, the
lead also answers it, so a question is never swallowed as direction.
When a job needs approval
A job can read and produce work freely. A call that posts, sends or changes something waits for a person. The job's card then shows the Confirm before it runs card for that call, with Approve and Decline, and the job pauses until someone decides. Approved, declined or expired, the job picks up again and is told which. See approvals and the Inbox.
Stopping a job
A job that is still live has Stop on its card.
- A running job finishes the step it is on and stops before the next one. Its status reads Stopping until it does.
- A job that is queued or waiting on an approval stops at once and no longer waits on that approval.
Either way the job's log ends "Stopped. Writing up what it had.", and what it found so far goes to the lead's review with the other jobs. When a queued or paused job is the last one the run was waiting on, its Stop also starts that review, so the button can show Stopping for a little while.
Stopping a job needs permission to act in the room. If the stop does not go through, the card says "Could not stop the job. Try again."
When the jobs finish
The jobs are the parts of one run, and the run ends with the lead's review. The lead reads what every job reported and posts one answer in the thread, or builds what was missing and runs that part again. This is the same review a message naming several teammates gets; see workflows in a room. A step card above the job cards follows the run as a whole.
The limits every job runs under
| Limit | What happens |
|---|---|
| Two hours from its start | "Reached the two-hour limit. Writing up what it had." |
| 600 steps | "Reached the 600-step limit. Writing up what it had." |
| Ten failed steps in a row | "Stopped: too many steps in a row failed. Writing up what it had." |
| The workspace runs out of credits | "Stopped: the workspace has no credits left for this." |
| Six jobs from one message | The lead cannot start more from one request |
| Four jobs running at once in a workspace | Any more wait as Queued until one ends |
A job's log is kept for 90 days. After that its card says "This job's log has expired." The answer the lead posted stays in the room.
Jobs in your Inbox
Jobs you asked for appear in your Inbox under Your room jobs while they wait on an approval, and for a day after they end. Each is titled with the agent and where the job is, such as "job finished" or "job waiting for your approval", and opens on the conversation it belongs to.
Where to go next
- Workflows in a room: prebuilt runs, test runs and the lead's review.
- The team room: the room these cards live in.
- Approvals and the Inbox: where held calls wait.
- Credits and budgets: what a job spends.