Tasks & Workflows

Understand Starfire AI task execution, multi-step workflows, agent participation, budgets, and runtime state.

Tasks & workflows

NEXUS expands Starfire beyond one-turn agent conversations into structured work that can have state, steps, limits, and outcomes.

Task model

A task represents a unit of work with a goal and execution context. A task can be owned by a user, project, or organization and can use an agent when that agent is appropriate for the work.

Useful task metadata can include:

• goal
• owner
• project context
• assigned agent
• status
• priority
• runtime budget
• model/tool constraints
• result or artifact references

Workflow model

A workflow coordinates multiple steps. Steps can be sequential, conditional, tool-backed, or approval-gated depending on the active runtime.

Workflow starts
      ↓
Gather context
      ↓
Agent step
      ↓
Tool step
      ↓
Approval required?
   ┌──┴──┐
  yes    no
   ↓      ↓
wait     continue
   └──┬───┘
      ↓
Result / artifact

Budgets

Automation needs harder limits than ordinary chat because a workflow can make multiple model and tool calls without a person manually triggering each one.

Runtime controls can include:

• maximum credits
• maximum model calls
• maximum tool calls
• maximum duration
• concurrency limits
• allowed models
• allowed tools

Failure handling

A workflow step can fail because of a provider error, invalid output, missing permission, tool failure, timeout, exhausted budget, or rejected approval.

The workflow should preserve enough state to show where it stopped and why.

Ownership and permissions

An agent or workflow runs under an execution context. It should not inherit administrator power simply because its creator is an administrator, and it should not escape organization policy because its instructions request it.

Status

Tasks and workflow orchestration are part of the NEXUS-era automation expansion. Individual actions, triggers, and runtime controls can be Alpha / staged while the system is rolled out.

Approvals & memory

Learn how sensitive workflow steps can wait for human approval and how persistent context is separated from runtime state.