Task Duration

When you start a task in OutcomeDev, you might wonder how long it can actually run. The answer depends on a few factors, but most tasks are able to complete fully regardless of how complex or time-consuming they are.

What Determines Task Duration

Each task has a maximum duration setting that you can configure in your settings. This controls how long the AI agent is allowed to work before it is automatically stopped. The default is 60 minutes, but Pro users can extend this up to 5 hours for particularly complex work.

When a task runs, the AI agent works inside a secure cloud environment. It clones your repository, installs dependencies, writes code, runs tests, and pushes changes back to your branch. All of this happens continuously without you needing to do anything.

What Happens During Long Tasks

If a task takes longer than a few minutes to complete, you might notice the chat interface staying live and showing updates as they happen. This is because OutcomeDev maintains a real-time connection to track the task's progress.

In the background, your task continues running even if the interface needs to briefly reconnect. The agent does not stop just because a connection was interrupted. It keeps working until it either completes successfully or hits the maximum duration you set.

You can close your browser, come back hours later, and refresh the page. As long as the task has not timed out, you will see it completed with a pull request ready for review.

For tasks where you anticipate needing follow-up conversations, you can enable Keep-Alive mode. This tells OutcomeDev to keep the environment running indefinitely. While Keep-Alive is active, the VM consumes your runtime budget even when idle. This makes rapid iteration much faster as the agent can continue right where it left off.

If you do not enable Keep-Alive, the environment stays active for a 5-minute Warm Window after the agent finishes. This period is also billed, as it allows for instant follow-up. If no activity occurs within 5 minutes, the environment shuts down automatically. You can also shut it down manually at any time to stop the billing clock.

Summary

In short, task duration is limited by the maximum duration you set in your settings, not by any external infrastructure constraint. A 60-minute task will run to completion uninterrupted. Even if you are away from your computer, you can trust that the agent will finish the work and deliver results to your repository.

For the longest-running tasks, simply enable Keep-Alive if you know you will want to continue the conversation later. Otherwise, let the agent work and come back when it sends you a notification that the task is complete.