How tasks move through the engine

Every deal gets 15–25 tasks generated from a playbook when the deal activates, plus any jurisdiction-specific tasks (Florida deals pick up FL-specific items automatically). Here's how each one moves and where you'll see it.

Task statuses

Status	What it means
pending	Generated but not yet active. Waiting on a trigger (date, prerequisite, or event). Most tasks spend time here.
in_progress	Trigger fired. The drafter is producing the outbound email. Short-lived.
waiting_response	Email sent. Awaiting a reply from a party.
proposed_complete	A reply came in that the AI thinks satisfies the task, medium confidence. Needs your Confirm or Reject.
complete	Done — auto-completed, AI-proposed-and-confirmed, artifact-arrived, or manually marked.
skipped	Marked not applicable.
blocked	The engine can't proceed (no recipient, or escalated past overdue). Needs you. See When a task is blocked.

How tasks activate

Three triggers:

1. Date-based. A task tied to the contract closing date activates N days before. EMD-confirmation activates 1 day before the EMD deadline. Inspection coordination activates 7 days before the inspection period ends.
2. Prerequisite-based. Some tasks gate on others. Confirm closing time and location won't activate until Title confirms closing package ready is complete. If you see a task captioned "Waiting on: [task name]", that's the engine correctly holding it until the upstream one clears.
3. Event-based. HOA detection fires an event that activates the HOA task set. Deal activation fires the kickoff intro. New inbound emails can fire events too.

An hourly cron walks every active deal, finds tasks ready to activate, and kicks them off. Event-driven triggers fire immediately — the cron is the safety net for date-anchored work.

What activation does

When a task activates:

1. Status flips to in_progress.
2. The drafter runs — reads your contract, your writing voice, the task's template, the relevant contact — and produces a draft email.
3. Same-day same-recipient drafts are consolidated if possible (see How BuyerFlo drafts your emails).
4. Draft lands as an Approval card with a 10-minute undo window (auto mode) or sits indefinitely (manual mode).
5. When dispatched, status moves to waiting_response.

How tasks complete

Four paths:

1. Auto-complete (high confidence). A party replies, the matcher scores the reply against the task's completion criteria, scores ≥85%. Task flips to complete with the reply quoted as evidence.
2. AI proposal (medium confidence). Same as above but score is 60–84%. Task moves to proposed_complete. You see a card under the Approvals filter — Confirm to complete, Reject to re-open for further nudging.
3. Artifact received. A classified PDF matches the task's artifact_slot (e.g. EMD proof auto-closes the EMD-confirmation task). Task completes with the document as evidence.
4. Manual. You click Mark complete on the task row (or the kebab menu) → enter a reason. Audit-logged.

When tasks escalate to blocked

If a task sits in waiting_response past its due date + the escalation threshold (default 2 days), the daily escalation cron flips it to blocked. It lands on the deal page under the Blocked filter and on the Today page. See When a task is blocked for what to do.

Where you see tasks in the workspace

The deal page filter row drives what you see in the middle pane:

• All — actionable items right now: approvals, threads, blockers, plus any pending tasks that are overdue.
• Approvals — drafted emails awaiting your review + AI-proposed completions awaiting your decision.
• Threads — in-flight conversations (sent something, awaiting reply).
• Tasks — the full Plan view: every non-skipped task grouped by phase (Contract → Inspection → Financing → Title → Closing) with status badges.
• Blocked — only the blocked ones.
• Contacts — the people on this deal.
• Documents — every file attached.

The Overdue group at the top of the All view surfaces pending+overdue tasks so a task that's never been activated (nothing else surfacing it) doesn't sit invisible. Cards are sorted most-days-late first.

Lateness signals

Past-due tasks get a visual lateness ladder so urgency is legible at a glance:

• 0–2 days late — neutral
• 3–6 days late — amber band, "N days late" badge
• 7+ days late — red band, "Stale" treatment

Plus an inline caption telling you what's actually going on: "Sent to Patricia 3d ago · no reply", "Waiting on: Confirm commitment letter received", etc.

Reopen

You can reopen any completed or skipped task via the kebab menu. Status flips back to pending; the audit trail keeps the full history of what happened before.