Continue Work After Restarts

Neotask can pick your work back up after a restart. When this is on, interrupted scheduled runs start again, interactive agent threads continue where they stopped, and coding sessions reopen in the branch they were working in. You do not have to remember what was in flight.

The setting is on by default. It is account-wide, so it follows you to every device you sign in on, and it applies to every company. A single company can deviate when you want that company to behave differently.

What It Is

An interruption is anything that stops Neotask before its work finishes:

With Continue work after restarts on, Neotask records what was interrupted, then resumes it after the restart. Work that already finished is never repeated. Scheduled runs resume a bounded number of times, so a run that keeps being interrupted does not retry forever.

With the setting off, Neotask still records what was interrupted. You see it in the activity feed, but nothing starts again on its own. You resume by opening the thread or the task yourself.

Turn It On Or Off

  1. Open the Neotask desktop app and select Settings.
  2. Select Automations.
  3. Turn Continue work after restarts on or off.

The choice is saved to your account and synced to every device you sign in on.

Changing this account-wide toggle re-syncs every company to the new value and clears any company override. A company differs again only after you change the toggle inside that company's own settings.

Per-Company Override

One company can behave differently from your account setting.

  1. Open the company dashboard.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Turn Continue work after restarts on or off for this company.

This overrides the account-wide value for that company only. Every other company keeps the account setting.

A company override is useful when one company runs work you would rather restart by hand, for example while you are testing a new process.

What Resumes And What Does Not

When the setting is on, Neotask resumes:

Neotask also cleans up after the interrupted session. Development servers and commands left running by a previous session are stopped or adopted safely, so nothing is left holding a port or running twice.

Blog posts and emails are protected against duplicates. If a run is retried, Neotask does not publish the same post or send the same email again.

By design, Neotask never resumes these on its own:

Launch Neotask At Login

Launch Neotask at login starts Neotask when you sign in to your computer. It is off by default and sits on the same Automations screen.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Select Automations.
  3. Turn on Launch Neotask at login.

Not everything needs the app open. Scheduled tasks and the Neotask service keep running with the app closed. Company planning, new task creation, and the nightly and weekly reviews run only while the app is open. With Launch Neotask at login on, that work continues right after a restart instead of waiting until you next open Neotask.

Launch Neotask at login is supported on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Windows Notes

During shutdown, Windows may briefly show Neotask is saving agent work. That message means Neotask is saving the state of work that is in progress so it can be resumed. Let it finish.

If Windows restarts to finish an update, it can reopen Neotask when you sign back in. This depends on your Windows sign-in options allowing apps to restart.

Coding Sessions

Neotask Code keeps each coding session tied to its own place in your repository, so a restart never puts your work on the wrong branch.

For more about branches and working copies, see Neotask Code: Git and GitHub.

Troubleshooting

Find What Was Interrupted

The activity feed records both sides of a restart:

If you see Interrupted by restart with no matching Resumed after restart, check whether the setting is on for that company.

A Thread Shows "Send A Message To Continue"

Some threads cannot be continued automatically, for example when the assistant session has expired. The thread shows Send a message to continue instead of resuming on its own. Send a message in that thread to continue working.

Nothing Resumed After A Restart

  1. Open Settings, select Automations, and confirm Continue work after restarts is on.
  2. Open the company, select Settings, and confirm that company is not overriding the setting to off.
  3. Check the activity feed for Interrupted by restart entries. Work that is waiting for your approval is recorded there but is never resumed automatically.
  4. Confirm the app was open. Company planning, new task creation, and the nightly and weekly reviews need the app running. Turn on Launch Neotask at login so Neotask opens with your computer.

A Run Stopped Retrying

Scheduled runs resume a bounded number of times. A run that keeps being interrupted stops retrying and stays in the activity feed for you to review. Run it again once the cause is fixed.