Tasks

A task is the unit of every agent run. assigning an issue to an agent, @-mentioning an agent in a comment, sending a message in chat, or an Autopilot firing on schedule all produce a task. Concierto puts it in a queue; a daemon picks it up and hands it off to the corresponding AI coding tool, then writes the result back to the server when it finishes.

Tasks and issues are two different objects. A single issue can be assigned, @-mentioned, and manually rerun many times, each produces a new task.

The states a task goes through

• Queued, the task was just created and is waiting for a daemon to pick it up
• Dispatched, a daemon has claimed it and is starting the AI coding tool
• Running, the AI coding tool is actually doing the work
• Completed. Finished successfully; the output (comments, code commits, status changes) is written back to the server
• Failed. Aborted with an error or timeout; if the failure reason is retryable, the task automatically returns to queued for another attempt
• Cancelled, the user cancelled it

What happens when a task times out

The Concierto server scans every 30 seconds. Two kinds of timeout trigger a failure:

Both timeouts use failure reason timeout and retry automatically (next section). For the related runtime-missing check, see Daemon and runtimes → When a runtime is marked offline.

Which failures retry automatically, which don't

Failures fall into two categories: retryable and non-retryable.

Retryable (Concierto automatically requeues):

• runtime_offline, the daemon went missing after the task was dispatched
• runtime_recovery. The daemon crashed and restarted, reclaiming tasks it didn't finish
• timeout, runtime or dispatch timeout

Non-retryable (the task stays in failed):

• agent_error. The AI coding tool itself reported an error (API error, quota exceeded, internal bug). Underlying problems aren't retried, that would loop forever.

Automatic retry also has two extra conditions:

1. At most 2 attempts, 1 original + 1 retry. If the retry also fails, no further retries, even if the reason is retryable.
2. Only for issue- and chat-triggered tasks, Autopilot-triggered tasks do not retry automatically.

Manual rerun vs. automatic retry

A manual rerun is one you trigger from the CLI or the API (POST /api/issues/{id}/rerun):

concierto issue rerun <issue-id>

Behavior:

• Targets the issue's current agent assignee, not whoever ran the most recent task. If the assignee changed since the last run, rerun follows the current assignment. To rerun a specific agent that is no longer the assignee, reassign the issue first, then rerun.
• Cancels the assignee's queued or running task on this issue (if any). Tasks owned by other agents on the same issue (e.g. parallel @-mention runs) are left alone.
• Creates a brand-new task. Attempt count resets to 1, even if the original task hit the attempt ceiling.
• Starts a fresh agent session, the prior session ID is not inherited. A manual rerun means you've judged the previous output bad, so resuming the same conversation would replay the same poisoned state. (Automatic retry, by contrast, does inherit the session. That path is for infrastructure failures, not bad output.)

Comparison:

How a failed task affects issue status

If an issue-triggered task fails (and no automatic retry succeeds) because the issue was assigned to an agent, the issue's status automatically rolls back from in_progress to todo, so when you open the board you immediately see "this one needs another look." See Issues and projects.

Can a task continue from the previous context

Yes, as long as the AI coding tool supports session resumption.

Concierto pins the session ID twice during a task: once at the start (when the AI tool returns its first system message), and once at the end (on completion or failure). The first lets the daemon recover if it crashes mid-run; the second is reserved for the next automatic retry, where that ID is passed back so the agent can pick up the previous conversation and file state. Manual rerun deliberately skips this and starts a fresh session, see Manual rerun vs. automatic retry.

But which AI coding tools actually support this varies a lot:

• ✅ Real support. Claude Code, Copilot, Hermes, Kimi, Kiro CLI, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Pi
• ⚠️ Code exists but unusable. Codex, Cursor
• ❌ No support, Gemini

See Providers Matrix → Session resumption.

Next

• Providers Matrix, capability differences across the 11 AI coding tools (including the exact session-resumption status)
• Assigning issues to agents / @-mentioning agents in comments / Chat / Autopilots, the four ways to trigger a task