Core concepts¶

An ASC report carries five independent pieces of state. They travel together, but each answers a different question for the application receiving the report. This page is the shortest route to the model; the status model contains the normative rules.

What an ASC report contains¶

Part	Question it answers	Example
Phase	Where is this work in its lifecycle?	`WAITING`
Primary status	What is the best current summary?	`HUMAN_APPROVAL_REQUIRED`
Conditions	What other durable facts are true?	`PROVENANCE_INCOMPLETE`
Events	What happened during execution?	`FALLBACK_USED`
Retry contract	Can another attempt be made safely?	Safe after 2 seconds

Every status belongs to one scope¶

An agent run is a tree of work. Each status describes exactly one declared scope:

task
├── step
│   ├── model_call
│   └── tool_call
├── handoff
│   └── task
└── artefact
    └── evaluation

A tool call may finish with PERMISSION_DENIED while the parent task remains active. A task may finish with PARTIAL_SUCCESS while preserving the successful and failed child outcomes. Consumers must not let one scope overwrite another.

Phase is not outcome¶

QUEUED, EXECUTING, WAITING, FINISHED, and UNKNOWN describe lifecycle position. They do not say why work is waiting or how it finished. The primary status supplies that meaning.

For example:

Phase	Primary status	Meaning
`WAITING`	`HUMAN_INPUT_REQUIRED`	Execution can resume after a person supplies information
`EXECUTING`	`RETRY_SCHEDULED`	The current attempt failed and another is planned
`FINISHED`	`PARTIAL_SUCCESS`	Some requested units completed and others did not

Interruption is not failure¶

Input, approval, and authentication are expected resumable states. Treating them as generic exceptions loses the information a host needs to present the right interaction and resume execution.

Retryability is not safety¶

A dependency failure can be transient while replay remains unsafe. If a payment, message, booking, or other mutation may already have committed, the correct status is RESULT_STATE_UNKNOWN. Reconcile first; never blindly retry.

Implement the minimum ASC contract →