Chronoverse uses explicit state machines for workflow preparation and job execution. Preconditions reject transitions that arrive late, conflict with another owner, or target a terminal resource.
Workflow build states
QUEUED → STARTED → COMPLETED
A build may instead end as FAILED or CANCELED. Generation checks tie updates to the workflow revision that produced them.
Job states
PENDING → QUEUED → RUNNING → COMPLETED
Terminal alternatives are FAILED and CANCELED. System failures may return eligible work to a retryable state before the retry limit is exhausted.
Every new FAILED or CANCELED transition stores its normalized reason in the same database update as the status. Returning a job to a retryable state clears any terminal reason so stale diagnostics cannot appear as the final outcome.
Protected transitions
Once a job is claimed, mutating RPCs require the current lease token. A stale worker cannot complete a job after another worker has recovered and reclaimed it.
Terminal workflow events
Job completion and failure can update workflow failure counters, rescheduling metadata, notifications, and analytics. Deterministic event identifiers make those side effects safe to replay.