Workflows, Work Items, Tasks, And Activations
These terms are related but they are not interchangeable.
Workflow
Section titled “Workflow”A workflow is the top-level running instance of a playbook. It is the main operator-facing record for a run of work.
Work Item
Section titled “Work Item”A work item is a meaningful unit inside the workflow board. It helps operators and the orchestrator reason about progress, branches, and ownership at a level above one runtime task.
A task is the execution contract that a runtime claims and performs. It is the unit that carries loop mode, tool policy, budgets, and result reporting expectations.
Activation
Section titled “Activation”An activation is the control-plane wake-up or orchestration cycle that reacts to changes in workflow state and decides what should happen next.
Why The Distinction Matters
Section titled “Why The Distinction Matters”If you collapse these concepts together, the system becomes hard to reason about. Agirunner keeps them separate so operators can see process state at the right level and runtimes can execute against explicit task contracts.