THE GITHTML FIELD GUIDE
Review an asynchronous job design for retries and ownership
An asynchronous job review should establish what a job represents, which delivery guarantees apply, and how duplicate or failed work is handled. Trace ownership from submission through completion, including retries and cleanup. Do not assume that placing work on a queue makes execution exactly once or makes failures someone else's responsibility.
Identify the actual delivery contract
Start with the specific queue or scheduler and its configured behavior. Amazon SQS standard queues, for example, document at-least-once delivery; that is a concrete example, not a statement about every messaging system. Verify the provider and queue type used by the project before applying any guarantee. An illustrative export job should have a clear relationship to the user's request and any processing attempts. Ask whether job identity persists across retries and which component decides that an attempt is complete.
Walk through an awkward sequence
Use an illustrative sequence in which a worker creates an artifact but fails before recording completion. What happens when the work is delivered again? Identify the evidence for deduplication or another deliberate handling strategy. Then consider invalid input, a temporarily unavailable dependency, and a job that repeatedly fails. A statement that retries are supported is incomplete without conditions, limits, and ownership. Review how users learn the final outcome and whether a abandoned attempt leaves retained data or misleading status behind.
- Identity: distinguish the user request, queued job, and processing attempt.
- Retry: verify qualifying failures, limits, and duplicate handling.
- Completion: identify the durable evidence and the owner of cleanup or escalation.
Separate a design concern from a confirmed defect
If the review packet omits a failure path, request the relevant code or operational policy rather than declaring that the system loses data. Record the scenario, evidence inspected, and missing information. A useful review conclusion might be that completion ordering needs verification before approval. Keep the HTML explanation chronological, with one failure sequence that can be read on a small screen. The document is a snapshot of the design and evidence; any experiments, queue inspection, or production intervention must occur separately with the appropriate authorization.
Sources and further reading
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