Core meaning
- Capability purpose
- Let lengthy processing continue safely while preserving state, retry/failure semantics, and owner-visible completion.
- Meaningful outcome
- The operation reaches a durable completed, failed, cancelled, or intervention-required state with output and provenance references.
- Boundaries — includes
- handoff, run identity, queued/running state, progress, retry, cancellation where supported, terminal state, result links, and durable notification.
- Boundaries — excludes
- domain-specific processing logic, initial action authorization, transient UI animation, and result interpretation.
- Terms and concepts
- A
background operation is an execution run whose lifecycle outlives the initiating interaction.
Interaction Contract MLEs
Execute asynchronously
- Actor
- An authorized workflow, scheduler, or action executor.
- Command / intent
- Run accepted work asynchronously and preserve its outcome.
- Current state
- An authorized request, inputs, and execution policy exist.
- Policies / invariants
- Handoff is acknowledged; run state is inspectable; retries are bounded and attributable; duplicate effects are prevented where required; terminal outcomes and outputs are durable; failure does not masquerade as completion.
- Transition
- Create the run, release the initiating surface, process asynchronously, persist state transitions, and publish terminal outcome.
- Result
- A terminal run record linked to outputs or failure evidence.
- Events / effects
- Durable owner-facing updates may be emitted; downstream capabilities may consume successful outputs.
- Unknowns
- Universal cancellation and retry limits are not established.
Rules and defaults
Rules / invariants
- The initiating interface need not remain active for work to complete.
- Durable completion/failure state must not depend only on a transient toast.
Recommended defaults
- Acknowledge handoff promptly and route completion through the normal owner-attention surface.
Communication MLEs
Background operation status
- Purpose
- Tell the owner that work was accepted and later reached a meaningful terminal state.
- Trigger
- Handoff, completion, failure, cancellation, or required intervention.
- Audience
- Initiating owner or responsible operator.
- Required meaning
- Identify the operation, current/terminal state, result or error, and any required action.
- Representative example text
- Example; illustrative, not shipped copy: “Processing continues in the background. A result update will appear when it finishes.”
- Possible realizations
- update feed, event, push, inline status, or API callback.
Unknown / unresolved
- Communication channel and retry policy remain realization-specific.
Statement provenance
| Statement | Semantic class | Evidence status | Source / note |
|---|
| Long-running work releases the initiating surface and reports a durable outcome. | recommended default | sourced | B04. |