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Workforce operations

Runbook for the task-ops automation pack — rollout waves, the kill switch, symptom→action table, and where to look when agent automation misbehaves.

3 min read

This is the operator's page for the AI-workforce automation. The product surfaces live in the app (Agents → Workforce is the operational home); this page covers rollout, the kill switch, and diagnosis.

Rollout waves

The pack provisions per organization with sticky opt-outs (org edits always win; a re-run never re-activates triggers an admin disabled):

  1. Wave 0 — dogfood: enable for an internal organization (provisioning/provision_task_ops_pack with activation), watch the Workforce health strip for a week. Exit: zero unacknowledged automation failures.
  2. Wave 1 — provisioned, off: all organizations receive the pack inactive; admins self-serve via the Workforce master toggle. Exit: health strip clean for 72 h across enabled orgs.
  3. Wave 2 — default on: enable by default for organizations that never toggled.

The kill switch

Time to quiet: under two minutes. Switching the master toggle off (Agents → Workforce, admin-only, audited) — or running the workflows/ops/disable_task_ops_pack operation — does two things: deactivates every pack trigger row (the scheduler stops scanning them) and gates the run path itself (task_automation policy), so even an already-queued event refuses to start agent work. In-flight runs finish; nothing new starts.

Verification: the Workforce page shows automation off; new task assignments produce no acknowledgment comment; [TaskOpsKillSwitch] appears in the backend logs.

Symptom → action

SymptomLikely causeAction
Tasks assigned to agents do nothingAutomation off, or pack triggers inactiveWorkforce toggle; Automations → check tasks/… triggers are active
Work stuck In progress > 24 hAgent run died; stale sweep will roll it backCheck the task's run history; the hourly sweep returns it to To do
Agent refuses every runBudget pause or circuit breakerWorkforce → needs-attention queues; raise budget or change task status as a human
Reviews pile upReviewers missing the inboxReview reminders escalate at 4 h / 24 h automatically; check Inbox preferences
External runs always fail runtime_offlineNo daemon online for the adapterSettings → API → Runtimes: daemon status; tale daemon status on the machine
Digest reports capped numbersVery high activity day hit a scan capNumbers are lower bounds; no action needed

Where to look

  • Logs: stable bracket prefixes — [AgentTaskRun], [ExternalRuns], [WorkforceRollup], [TaskOpsKillSwitch], [RetentionCleanup] — with key=value fields. Prompt bodies are never logged.
  • Per-task trace: the task sheet's run history links each run to its automation execution.
  • Data lifecycle: run records honor the agentRuns retention category (default 180 days, org-tunable 30–400); aggregates are pruned at a fixed 400 days; review decisions survive subject erasure pseudonymized.

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