---
title: "Agent runs"
manual: "LLM Foundation"
version: "0.41"
permalink: "https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:administration-agent-runs@0.41"
source: "Administration/AgentRuns.rst"
rendered: "2026-10-20T08:48:47+00:00"
---

# Agent runs {#administration-agent-runs}

An *agent run* is one execution of the tool-calling agent loop. A run can
**pause** and wait for a human before it continues: to approve a tool call it
wants to make, or to supply a piece of typed input it asked for. The
**Agent Runs** module is the inbox where you make those decisions and
review runs that have finished.

The admin inbox lives in **AI > Operation > Agent Runs**;
the same actions are also reachable through the editor module
**AI > AI Tasks** ([ADR-131](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-131@0.41)). Visibility is
actor-scoped: an administrator or a holder of the *Approve suspended AI
runs* grant sees every run, everyone else only the runs they started.
Approving continues the run under its owner's identity; the deciding
backend user is recorded for audit. The page works fully with JavaScript off (JavaScript only adds focus and
a deny confirmation).

## The inbox {#administration-agent-runs-inbox}

The module shows two lists:

-   **Awaiting your decision** — runs paused for an approval or for input, each
    rendered as a card with the controls to resolve it.
-   **Recent runs** — a read-only table of the most recently finished runs
    (configuration, status, created, finished, approval, cost when non-zero, and —
    on the runs you may open — a **Timeline** link to the run's detail
    page).

The **Approval** column states who granted a run's approval
([ADR-173](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-173@0.41)), so you can see it without opening each run. Four
readings, and only *Approved by the person who started the run* is highlighted:

-   **Approved by the person who started the run** — the decision and the request
    came from the same backend user. Allowed by default; whether it is refused is
    the *Require a second approver* setting ([ADR-172](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-172@0.41)).
-   **Approved by someone other than the person who started the run** — two people
    were involved.
-   **Approved, but the record does not say who started the run** — the run was
    started by a service account or another non-backend caller, so there is no
    backend user to compare the approver against. The approver is still recorded.
-   **Approved, but the record does not say by whom** — the approving user was not
    recorded, so nothing can be said about the decision either way.

A run can pass several approval fences, and the column has one cell for it. It
then shows the strongest single reading, not a summary: *Approved by the person
who started the run* if any one fence was released by the initiator, otherwise
*Approved, but the record does not say by whom* if any one approver went
unrecorded. So a run whose second fence a colleague signed still reads as
self-approved, and the run timeline is where the fences are shown one by one.

An empty cell says three different things and must not be read as "no approval
was needed": the run passed no approval fence, or it was denied, or the
approvals could not be loaded or decoded. The run's timeline tells them apart, on the runs
you may open.

The same label appears on the approval row of the run timeline, next to the
`decidedBy` uid. A denial never carries one: denying your own run is
deliberate, not an anomaly.

The column shows the same label to everyone who can see the row. A user holding
*Approve suspended AI runs* (`agent_approve`) lists other people's runs
without being able to open them, and for those runs the label is all the column
says — it never names a user.

If the store cannot be read, the page shows a warning box rather than a
silently empty inbox — an empty list therefore means "nothing waiting", not
"load failed".

## The run timeline {#administration-agent-runs-timeline}

**Timeline** opens one run end to end, read-only. It shows the run's
summary — correlation, status and why it ended, configuration, rounds, tokens,
cost — and below it a single time-ordered list of everything the run produced:

-   **Step** — a recorded loop step (a request, a model answer, a tool execution).
-   **Provider call** — a telemetry row: which provider and model served it, how
    long it took, whether a cache hit or a fallback was involved, and the error
    class when it failed. These are joined to the run because since
    [ADR-153](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-153@0.41) every provider call a run makes carries the run's
    uuid as its correlation id.
-   **Governance** — a decision taken during the run: a tool the gate withheld, a
    guardrail block, an approval requirement, an injected-context refusal.

You can only open your own runs; an administrator can open all of them. The
approval grant lets you *decide* another user's waiting run, but not read its
timeline — the **Timeline** link is therefore offered only on the rows
you may open. Reaching a run you may not read directly by URL is
indistinguishable from reaching one that does not exist: both send you back to
the list.

> [!NOTE]
> The timeline is **metadata only**. Prompts, model answers, reasoning, tool
> arguments and tool results are never rendered here, whatever
> `privacy.level` is set to, and neither is the verbatim resumable state of a
> waiting run. What you see are counts, sizes, names, timings and token
> figures. For live prompt and answer inspection use the playground.

A run started before this extension version has steps but no provider calls:
its calls were traced individually and cannot be attributed retroactively.

## Approving a tool call {#administration-agent-runs-approve}

A run pauses for approval (status `WAITING_FOR_APPROVAL`) when the agent
wants to call a tool that opts in to human approval, or when a guardrail
demands it. The card lists every tool call in the pending turn — the tool name
and, in a collapsible **Arguments** block, the exact arguments the
model proposed. A call whose tool is no longer registered is flagged.

One **Approve** or **Deny** covers the **whole** pending turn,
not a single call. Denying refuses the pending calls and continues the model
conversation with that refusal; the model may answer or propose another turn.

After a denial nothing is executed. The model is told that the approval was
declined and by whom — the user who started the run, or another backend
user — and answers from that ([ADR-200](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-200@0.41)).

When the parent page already holds a page with the proposed title, the
preview of `create_page_draft` carries a warning line, and so does the
preview of `create_content_element_draft` when the page already holds an
element of that type with the proposed header, so a second copy is not
approved by accident. The preview lines are in the language of the backend
user the run acts as ([ADR-213](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-213@0.41)).

> [!WARNING]
> The decision is bound to the exact turn you are looking at. If the run has
> moved on since the page loaded — for example another admin already decided,
> or the turn changed — the approval is refused with a warning. Reload the
> inbox to see the current state and decide again. This prevents authorising a
> turn you never actually saw.

## Providing input {#administration-agent-runs-input}

A run pauses for input (status `WAITING_FOR_INPUT`) when the agent asks for
typed data against a declared schema. The card renders a form with one field
per schema property (text, number, integer or checkbox, with the field
description shown). Submitting validates and coerces the values against the
current schema; invalid input re-renders the form in place, keeping what you
typed and pointing at the error, rather than losing the run.

## Optional run diagnostics {#administration-agent-runs-diagnostics}

The run persister keeps its documented fallback when a repository operation
fails, even if the optional diagnostic logger throws. Refused writes and
failed claims retain `false`; a failed `begin()` or `findRun()`
retains `null`.
Logging cannot make these operations succeed. Explicit validation exceptions
still propagate.
A configured logger is attempted once with the existing severity, message and
context, without a fallback logging attempt. See [ADR-225: Agent outcomes survive optional diagnostic failures](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:adr-225@0.41).

The executor also retains its original outcome and exception when optional
logging fails after cancellation, lease loss, a guardrail verdict, a run failure
or a refused approval/input suspension. A failed run keeps its `FAILED`
outcome and the exception that ended it. Ownership guards continue to protect a
row reclaimed by another worker. Successful stored suspensions retain their
resumable state.

## Running queued runs asynchronously {#administration-agent-runs-async}

By default a queued run executes **in-process**, synchronously, with no setup —
suitable for interactive and small workloads. For genuinely asynchronous
execution, route the queue message to the Doctrine transport and run a
consumer:

```php
// settings.php / additional.php
$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['messenger']['routing']
    [\Netresearch\NrLlm\Service\Agent\Queue\AgentRunQueuedMessage::class] = 'doctrine';
```

```bash
vendor/bin/typo3 messenger:consume doctrine
```

> [!WARNING]
> Once you route the message to `doctrine` you **must** run a consumer.
> Without one, queued runs are never picked up, and the stale-run reaper below
> has no worker to hand reclaimed runs back to.

## Worker operating profile {#worker-operating-profile}

Deploy web processes separately from Doctrine consumers. Each consumer executes
one message at a time; start a bounded number of processes against the same
transport to control concurrency. Atomic run claims prevent duplicate ownership
when two consumers receive the same run. Size concurrency against model rate
limits, memory per request and database capacity.

TYPO3 14.3 supports the Symfony-style consumer limits:

**Bounded TYPO3 14.3 consumer**

```bash
vendor/bin/typo3 messenger:consume doctrine --time-limit=3600 \
    --memory-limit=256M --limit=100
```

On TYPO3 13.4, use the existing `messenger:consume doctrine` command with a
supervisor and the core's configured stop-worker listeners; the Symfony-style
options above are available from TYPO3 14.2. A supervisor should restart exited
consumers, stop them gracefully and leave enough time for a running model call
to finish. The existing non-idempotent write fence still governs recovery when
a process is killed during a write.

Run the reaper periodically, for example once per minute with `--limit=50`.
Its lease duration must exceed the maximum provider/tool request duration plus
the scheduling margin. A reaper retry is bounded by the runtime's existing
retry budget; it is not an alternative message broker.

**Aggregate worker and queue health**

```bash
vendor/bin/typo3 nrllm:agent:status --json --transport=doctrine \
    --minimum-workers=1 --worker-max-age=120 --max-queue-wait=300
```

The command returns success when no run lease is expired, all queued timestamps
are known, queue wait is within the limit and the requested transport has enough
live consumers. It returns failure for an unhealthy snapshot, or invalid for
malformed options. `--minimum-workers=0` explicitly disables the consumer
requirement for a synchronous-only installation. Counts of running runs include
interactive runs and must not be interpreted as a count of consumer processes.

Consumers renew a random process heartbeat at most once per 30 seconds, including
when idle. Only consumers serving the transport's `default` queue count; a
consumer restricted to other queue names cannot establish its health. Stopped
consumers remove their entry; active heartbeat updates prune entries older than
24 hours. Transport names contain no user or host identity.

Heartbeat storage and stop cleanup are best effort. A telemetry failure does not
stop consumption; failed heartbeat attempts retry at most once per 30 seconds
with the same process identity. Failed cleanup can leave a heartbeat until it
ages out. Warnings contain only the operation and exception class, without
connection details. Missing or stale observations remain visible to monitoring;
a failed status read is an error and does not produce a healthy snapshot.

A long blocking model/tool call delays the next consumer heartbeat. Set
`--worker-max-age` above the configured call timeout and polling margin. A
heartbeat proves that the consumer event loop ran recently; it cannot prove
that a remote provider is available. Monitor provider failures separately.

Queue-entry time is recorded for each enqueue/requeue, rather than guessed from
run age. Legacy or future timestamps contribute to `unknown_queue_wait`.
`oldest_queue_wait_seconds` is null when no measured queued row exists, and
zero when a measured row has just entered the queue. JSON contains aggregate
counts and durations only, without prompts, document data, actors or secrets.

## Reclaiming stale runs {#administration-agent-runs-reaper}

When a run is executed asynchronously, the worker holds a 15-minute lease that
it renews at every step. If the worker dies, the run is left `RUNNING` with a
lease nobody renews. The reaper reclaims those runs — it puts them back on the
queue, or, after three failed attempts, dead-letters them so they stop
occupying the running set:

```bash
vendor/bin/typo3 nrllm:agent:reap
```

`--limit` (default `50`) bounds how many stale runs one invocation handles.
Schedule it from cron or the scheduler's **Execute console commands**
task. The scan includes every `RUNNING` run whose positive lease expired,
including interactive starts and resumed segments. Runs without a saved queued
request, runs abandoned during a non-idempotent write and runs whose retry
budget is exhausted are dead-lettered. Retryable runs with a saved request are
requeued and need a running consumer to execute again. Each mutation rechecks
staleness, so a renewed lease wins over the reaper's earlier snapshot.

## Retention and privacy {#administration-agent-runs-retention}

A waiting run stores the transcript it needs to resume — the pending tool
calls and the conversation so far — **verbatim**, so it can pick up exactly
where it paused. Unlike the per-step event log, this resumable state is kept in
full regardless of the configured privacy level, and is cleared when the run
settles to a terminal status.

Nothing is deleted until a purge runs. Finished runs are removed on the
`privacy.retention.agentRun` window; runs still waiting for a decision use
the separate, deliberately longer `privacy.retention.approval` window, so a
purge never destroys work an approver has not got to yet. Set the `approval`
window generously if approvers may take days.

See [Data retention & purge](https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/netresearch/nr-llm:administration-data-retention@0.41) for the retention settings and the
purge command that covers agent runs along with every other content-bearing
table.