Task Context

Task Lifecycle

A task is a stateful, persistent conversation session. It does not terminate when the agent responds — instead it returns to an idle phase and waits for further input.

Phases

A task's status.phase is one of:

Phase	Meaning
idle	Between turns, waiting for the next input message.
processing	Mid-turn — actively executing, or yielded on one or more asynchronous operations.
terminal	Finished permanently. status.terminal_reason is set and the task MUST NOT be mutated further.

An idle task may accept new input. Exactly how long a runtime keeps an idle task open before completing it is implementation-defined — a runtime may keep it open indefinitely or enforce an inactivity lifespan.

Termination

When phase is terminal, status.terminal_reason explains why. It is one of:

terminal_reason	Meaning
completed	The task was finished by an explicit, positive action — never as a side effect of ordinary processing. A task that has simply delivered its output goes idle, not terminal.
errored	The task halted on an unrecoverable error — an unreachable endpoint, an invalid configuration, or an exceeded resource limit (max_turns, max_prompt_tokens, max_completion_tokens, max_age, max_tool_calls). Details are recorded in the task's error field.
restricted	The task was permanently locked by a guardrail or middleware lock_task outcome.

terminal_reason MUST be null for any non-terminal task.

Operational errors — HTTP failures, individual tool-level errors — are reported back to the LLM as capability results and do not terminate the task.

Context Object

The task context is the subset of a running task's state that is available to CEL expressions in middleware assertions, guardrails, agent prompt interpolation, capability bindings, and CEL tool expressions. It is exposed as the context variable (aliased as c).

Structure

context:
  agent:
    name: str              # The agent processing this task
    namespace: str         # The namespace
    started_at: str        # UTC ISO 8601 task creation timestamp

  user:
    id: str                # Implementation-specific user identifier
    email: str | None      # User email, if available

  llm:
    model: str             # Resolved model string, e.g. "gemini/gemini-2.5-flash"
    tokens:
      total: int
      prompt: int
      completion: int

  _history:
    turns: list[str]       # Ordered list of turn types: "input", "llm", "capability"
    turn_count: int

  input: list[TaskIO]      # Conversational inputs (user messages + agent parameters)
  output: list[TaskIO]     # Agent outputs so far

  capabilities:
    _meta:
      invocations: list[str]    # Ordered function names, one per invocation
      count: int
      delegation_count: int
    <function>:                 # Keyed by function name (see below)
      count_successful: int
      count_errored: int
      count_restricted: int
      timestamps: list[str]
      inputs: list[object]
      outputs: list[object]
      successful: list[bool]
      errored: list[bool]
      restricted: list[bool]
      task_ids: list[str] | None  # Present for sub-agent delegations only

TaskIO

input and output are lists of TaskIO objects. Each TaskIO contains:

• message — a list of content parts (the conversational text). This is a well-known key that MUST be present on every input.
• Dynamic keys from the agent's parameters schema (for input entries) or exposes schema (for output entries)

Each input turn carries its own snapshot of message and parameter values. CEL bindings reference them via:

context.input[0].ticket_id
context.input[0].project_name

Capability Keys

Capabilities are keyed by their function name — the exact identifier the LLM uses when invoking the capability. Derived as follows:

• Single-capability tool — sanitized agent capability reference (e.g. agent ref slack-post → key slack_post)
• Multi-capability tool — sanitized ref + sanitized capability name (e.g. ref github-file, capability read-chunk → key github_file_read_chunk)
• Sub-agent delegation — sanitized agent name (e.g. agent research-agent → key research_agent)

Sanitization replaces hyphens with underscores to produce valid CEL identifiers.

Accessing Context in CEL

Shorthand aliases

c          # alias for context
c.cap      # alias for context.capabilities
i          # alias for input  (middleware only)
o          # alias for output (after-middleware only)

Common patterns

# User identity
context.user.id
context.user.email

# Agent input parameters
context.input[0].ticket_id
context.input[0].repo_name

# First output message text
context.output[0].message[0].text

# Whether a capability succeeded at least once
context.capabilities.github_file_read_chunk.count_successful > 0

# Output from the most recent invocation of a capability
context.capabilities.zendesk_fetch_ticket.outputs[0]

# Total token usage
context.llm.tokens.total

# Number of turns
context.llm.tokens.total > 5000 && context._history.turn_count > 8

Available Scopes

The context variable is available in:

Scope	Variables
Middleware before steps	context, input, now
Middleware after steps	context, input, output, now
Guardrail before steps	context, input, now
Guardrail after steps	context, output, now
Agent bindings	context
CEL tool expression	context, input, now, mount.read(), mount.write()
Agent prompt interpolation	context
LLM capability script	<capability>(), file() — no context access

See CEL Reference for the full list of available functions and macros.