ruvnet/ruflo · error

Agent ${this.id} is not available (status: ${this.status})

Error message

Agent ${this.id} is not available (status: ${this.status})

What it means

Thrown by AgenticFlowAgent#executeTask (v3/@claude-flow/integration/src/agentic-flow-agent.ts:490) when the agent's status is 'terminated' or 'error'. Dead or errored agents refuse new work so failures do not compound; the message embeds the offending status so you know which branch tripped.

Source

Thrown at v3/@claude-flow/integration/src/agentic-flow-agent.ts:490

  /**
   * Execute a task
   *
   * ADR-001: When agentic-flow is available, delegates task execution
   * to agentic-flow's Agent.execute() which leverages:
   * - Flash Attention for 2.49x-7.47x faster processing
   * - SONA learning for real-time adaptation
   * - AgentDB for 150x-12,500x faster memory retrieval
   *
   * @param task - Task to execute
   * @returns Task result with output or error
   */
  async executeTask(task: Task): Promise<TaskResult> {
    this.ensureInitialized();

    // Validate agent is available
    if (this.status === 'terminated' || this.status === 'error') {
      throw new Error(`Agent ${this.id} is not available (status: ${this.status})`);
    }

    // Check concurrent task limit
    if (this.currentTaskCount >= this.config.maxConcurrentTasks) {
      throw new Error(`Agent ${this.id} has reached max concurrent tasks`);
    }

    this.currentTask = task;
    this.currentTaskCount++;
    this.status = 'busy';
    this.taskStartTime = Date.now();
    this.lastActivity = new Date();

    this.emit('task-started', {
      agentId: this.id,
      taskId: task.id,
      taskType: task.type,
    });

View on GitHub (pinned to fa13ee4ad6)

Solutions

1. Check agent.status (or a public availability getter) before dispatch and skip/recreate terminated or errored agents.
2. After any task failure, either call initialize() to recycle the agent or remove it from the pool and spawn a replacement.
3. In a scheduler loop, wrap dispatch in try/catch and treat this message as 'evict and respawn' rather than fatal.
4. Ensure terminate() is only called when the agent is being retired, and that nothing re-dispatches afterwards.

Example fix

// before
const result = await agent.executeTask(task); // agent.status === 'terminated'

// after
if (agent.status === 'terminated' || agent.status === 'error') {
  await agent.initialize(); // recycle, or replace the agent
}
const result = await agent.executeTask(task);

const AVAIL = new Set(['idle', 'busy', 'initialized']);
if (!AVAIL.has(agent.status) || agent.status === 'terminated' || agent.status === 'error') {
  await agent.initialize(); // recycle or replace
}

function isAgentAvailable(a: { status: string }): boolean {
  return a.status !== 'terminated' && a.status !== 'error';
}

try {
  return await agent.executeTask(task);
} catch (e) {
  if (/is not available \(status:/.test((e as Error).message)) {
    pool.evict(agent.id);
    return pool.spawn().executeTask(task);
  }
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling executeTask after agent.terminate() or after a previous task put the agent into status 'error'; a swarm scheduler that has not yet replaced a crashed agent still dispatching to it; resuming a queue whose agent references were persisted past their lifetime.

Common situations: Reusing agent objects across test runs without re-initializing; error-handling code that swallows a prior failure and keeps the agent in the pool; long-lived pools where terminated agents are not evicted.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid state transition" errors: "status must be X, actually Y", "already rejected/charging/uninstalled", "cannot ... while running" — what they mean when a library rejects your call — this error's family across 31 libraries.

Related errors

• Agent ${this.id} not initialized. Call initialize() first.
• No active task to checkpoint
• Agent not found: ${agentId}
• Cannot start terminated agent
• Can only pause active or busy agent

AI-assisted analysis of ruvnet/ruflo@fa13ee4ad6 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/49829edddf6e2569. Report an issue: GitHub.