---
title: Runs and approvals
description: What happens during a worker run, every run state, cancellation and retries, and how approvals bind to the exact content of an email or Slack post.
---

A **run** is one execution of a worker. The run history shows every run with its
status, steps, sources and result.

## Run states

| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **Queued** | Waiting to start. |
| **Running** | Working now. |
| **Waiting for approval** | Paused on an outside action you need to approve. |
| **Retrying** | A temporary failure; it will try again shortly. |
| **Cancel requested** | You asked it to stop; it stops after the current step. |
| **Completed** | Finished, with its result. |
| **Failed** | Finished with an error — for example an expired credential. |
| **Cancelled** | Stopped at your request. |

Runs continue safely through restarts: progress is saved as the run goes, so an
interrupted run resumes instead of repeating work.

## Cancelling

Cancel a queued or running run at any time. If it is mid-way through a call to
an outside service, the cancellation takes effect **after** that step — Ysra
never pretends an in-flight request wasn't sent.

## Retries

Temporary failures — a timeout, a busy service — are retried a limited number
of times with increasing delays, following the worker's retry settings. Problems
that retrying can't fix, such as a revoked credential, fail the run with a clear
reason.

## Approvals

When a worker wants to act outside Ysra — send an email, post to Slack — the run
pauses and shows the **exact** proposal:

- **Approve** — that exact content is sent, once.
- **Reject** — nothing is sent.

An approval is bound to the precise content. If anything about the message
changed, it would be a different proposal needing a new approval.

<div class="phones" markdown>

![Two approvals on mobile: an email from "Support digest" to a customer with Send it and Discard, and a Slack post from "Release announcer" with Approve and No](../assets/screens/mobile/workers.webp){ width="585" height="1266" }
/// caption
Approve or reject from your phone.
///

</div>

### Never sent twice

Just before an approved action is sent, it is marked as *being sent*. If the
worker crashed at that exact moment, the action is held for checking rather
than sent again automatically — so a crash can't produce a duplicate email or
message.

## Where to see runs

- **Portal → Workers** — every worker, its runs, filters, and a detailed view of
  each run tailored to its kind: steps and proposals for general workers,
  sources for research, draft and send status for mail, observations and
  transitions for uptime.
- **Phone → Workers** — what's waiting for your approval, and recent runs. The
  phone checks for updates only while runs are active, so an idle account stays
  quiet.