Background work
Kyra never makes you sit through silence. Anything that will take more than a moment becomes a task: Kyra acknowledges, starts it, and hands the conversation back to you immediately.
You can carry on talking about something else, end the session, or put the phone away. The work continues without you.
What becomes a task
Section titled “What becomes a task”Research and write-ups. Reorganising a notebook. Producing a long draft. Analysing a file you shared. Anything Kyra starts on your own machine. Roughly: if it would take more than a few seconds, it goes to the background.
Quick things stay inline — Kyra just answers, with no ceremony about it.
Following a task
Section titled “Following a task”By voice:
“What are you working on?” “Is the research done?” “What needs approval?” “What went wrong?”
On screen: the queue control on the home screen shows work in progress and recent results.
Task states
Section titled “Task states”| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued | Accepted, not started. |
| Running | In progress. |
| Waiting on a service | Blocked on something external; will resume. |
| Needs you | Stopped and waiting for your decision. |
| Completed | Done, result ready. |
| Failed — will retry | Something broke; Kyra tries again. |
| Failed | Gave up. Kyra tells you why. |
| Cancelled | You stopped it. |
Needs you is a first-class state, not an error. It means Kyra reached a point it should not pass without asking.
Approvals
Section titled “Approvals”Some actions always stop and ask, no matter how you have configured things:
- Sending a message or an email
- Publishing or sharing outside your account
- Inviting people
- Deleting or overwriting something that matters
- Reorganising a notebook in bulk
- Starting a coding session on your machine
- Placing a phone call
- Changing permissions
You approve by voice or from the queue. Kyra states the consequence in one clause and asks a yes-or-no question — it does not bury the ask in a paragraph.
For how to make Kyra ask less where it is safe to, see how much Kyra asks.
Cancelling
Section titled “Cancelling”“Cancel that.” “Stop the research.”
Kyra confirms what it cancelled. You can also cancel from the queue.
Cancelling stops the work. It does not always undo what has already happened — if a task had written three notes before you stopped it, those three notes exist. Kyra will tell you what state it left things in.
When something fails
Section titled “When something fails”Kyra leads with the consequence, not the cause: “The write-up is done but saving it failed — it is still here, and I can retry.” Then the detail if you want it.
Retryable failures are retried automatically. Ask “what went wrong?” for a summary of recent failures.
Notifications
Section titled “Notifications”Turn on notifications and Kyra tells you when a task finishes or needs you. Without them you have to ask, which rather defeats the point of background work.