When a task is blocked

Blocked means the engine did everything it could on its own and now needs you. Two ways a task gets here.

Reason 1 — overdue past escalation

Every task has an escalate_after_days setting (default 2). When the task's due date passes and no party has replied, the daily escalation cron flips the status to blocked. It lands on the Today page under "Needs you now" as a red card.

The card shows the task, the due date, how many days overdue, and the history of what the engine tried. Typically: "Initial send on Apr 10, no reply, 3 days overdue."

Reason 2 — can't find a recipient

Some tasks are aimed at a stakeholder role (e.g. "lender" or "escrow officer"). If your deal has no contact in that role, the engine can't send and the task is immediately blocked with a "missing contact" card.

What to do with a blocked card

Each blocked card offers a few actions:

Add the missing contact. If the block reason is "no lender on file," you'll see a form — role dropdown, name, email. Fill it in, hit Save. The contact is created on the deal, saved to your Directory for future deals, and every blocked task matching that role unblocks simultaneously.

Mark not applicable. If the task genuinely doesn't apply to this deal (no title company on a cash deal with buyer's attorney), click "Skip this task" and add a reason. The task moves to skipped and any prereq-gated downstream tasks unlock.

Manually complete. If you already handled it outside the app, use the task's kebab menu → Mark complete → reason.

Reopen after the fact. Blocked tasks can be reopened to pending from the kebab menu if the situation changed.

Why tasks go blocked (not just silent)

A silent overdue task looks like a problem that'll get caught later. A blocked task demands your attention. The engine's job is to surface work that needs you, not hide it.

What you should NOT do

• Don't ignore the card assuming the engine will try again. It won't. Blocked is terminal until you act.
• Don't manually email the party to push it forward, then leave the task in blocked. The engine won't know you handled it. Mark the task complete with a reason.
• Don't delete blocked tasks. (You can't — tasks aren't deletable.) Use Dismiss if the task doesn't apply.

Counter-party-satisfied tasks

One surprise: a task assigned to the appraiser can be satisfied by a reply from a totally different party. If the listing agent writes "appraisal came in at $450k" on the deal thread, the matcher scores that reply against every open task — not just the ones assigned to the listing agent. If the match score crosses 0.60, you'll see a proposed-complete card for the appraiser's task even though the listing agent is the one who mentioned it.

Cross-party satisfaction isn't a bug; it's a feature. Just review the proposal before confirming.