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Your Tasks may run on any free machine in the Workspace, including a teammate’s. They stay your Tasks wherever they run. When you want to work on one yourself, or the work needs something only your machine has, continue it on your machine. Only the Task’s assignee can do this, and the run only ever moves to the assignee’s machine.

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Prerequisites

  • You are the Task’s assignee.
  • The Task runs on a teammate’s machine, or, for a Cloud Project, in the Cloud environment.
  • Your machine has a ready folder for the Task’s Project. See Machines.
  • The Task is not Done, Archived, or Rejected.

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Continue a Task on your machine

When your Task runs on a teammate’s machine or in the Cloud environment, the line above the message box says Sending moves this run to your machine and stops it on ‘s (or …stops it in the Cloud environment). If you can’t take the run over yet, that line says why instead, for example when your machine has no folder for the Project. When a question addressed to you is open, the message box sends your answer to that question and keeps the run on its current machine. Choosing an option or the question’s × button also keeps the run there. See Answer a question in the conversation.
Line above the message box saying that sending moves the run to your machine and stops it on the teammate's machine

Your Task running on a teammate's machine

1

Open the Task

Open the Task in the desktop app or on the web.
2

Send a message

Type what to do next and send it. Cogno moves the run to your folder for the Project and starts a new run on your machine from the description and your message. The run on the previous machine stops.
In the desktop app, the Task description transitions into the workspace as soon as you send, with your message shown while the run moves to your machine. If the move is refused, you return to the description with your message back in the box and the reason above it. The transition respects your system’s reduced-motion preference; it does not change when the run starts.

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What moves with the run

The new run starts on the same branch, with the uncommitted changes still uncommitted. The run on the previous machine stops within about a minute. The new run starts from the description.

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When the machine running your Task stops responding

When the machine running a Task Cogno is working on stops responding for 10 minutes while the Task has work waiting, Cogno moves the run to another machine so the Task does not stall:
  • Your machine comes first, when it is online and has a ready folder for the Project.
  • Otherwise, the run moves to a teammate’s machine that is online and has a ready folder for the Project.
  • When no such machine is online, the Task waits where it is.
The new run is told that the previous machine stopped responding, that the previous run may have stopped partway through a turn, and to check whether it already sent a message or comment before sending it again. Cogno moves a Task this way at most 3 times a day. You receive the moved this task’s run to your machine notification only when the run lands on your machine.

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What Cogno keeps on your repository’s remote

To carry work that was not pushed, Cogno saves a checkpoint of the Task’s work at the end of every turn and pushes it to your repository’s remote as refs/cogno/checkpoints/task-<Task ID>. Only folders that Run in a Worktree are checkpointed; a folder set to Run directly is never touched.
A checkpoint can contain files you have not committed. Keep credentials and other files that must not leave your machine in .gitignore.

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When Cogno moves the run to you

A run may need something that exists only on your machine, such as local files, credentials, or a signed-in tool. Cogno then writes what it found into the description, pushes the work worth keeping, and moves the run to your machine. The new run starts there right away, and you receive a moved this task’s run to your machine notification in the Inbox.

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Troubleshooting