Preventing Silent Failures — Introducing the AI Assessment Watchdog

Release v0.1.228 | Maintenance Release

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One of the quietest frustrations in any AI-powered workflow is the stuck job — a process that starts, disappears into the ether, and never comes back with an answer. You refresh the page. You wait. Nothing. That's the problem we're fixing in v0.1.228.

The problem: assessments that vanish mid-run

Our AI deduction assessments are powerful, but they depend on external inference infrastructure. In rare cases — a transient network interruption, an upstream timeout, an infrastructure hiccup — an assessment can get stuck in a running state indefinitely. The AI never responds, the status never changes, and the agent requesting the assessment has no idea what happened or what to do next.

Previously, the only resolution path was manual investigation. That's not good enough.

The fix: a nightly watchdog

Starting with v0.1.228, a scheduled watchdog job runs every night at 03:00 UTC. Its sole job is to find assessments that have been running for more than 10 minutes — a reliable signal that something has gone wrong — and bring them to a clean, actionable resolution.

Here's what happens when the watchdog finds a stuck assessment:

1. The assessment is marked failed. Status is updated to failed, a human-readable errorMessage of 'Assessment timed out' is recorded, and the exact failure time is stamped.
2. The requesting agent is notified. An in-app warning notification is delivered with a direct link to retry the assessment. No hunting through dashboards, no support ticket needed.

Why this matters for fair, fast tenancy outcomes

Deposit disputes don't wait for stuck software. When an assessment silently hangs, it delays the evidence review that landlords, agents, and tenants are all waiting on. The watchdog ensures that even when infrastructure lets us down, agents get a clear signal and can act immediately — keeping the resolution process moving.

What you need to do

Nothing. This is a fully automated background job. If any of your assessments are ever caught by the watchdog, you'll see an in-app notification the next morning with a retry link ready to go.

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For technical details, see the AI Assessment Stuck-Running Watchdog feature documentation.