thedotmack/claude-mem · warning

Conflict

Conflict

Error message

Generation job is currently processing; cancel or wait for completion before retrying

What it means

POST /v1/jobs/:id/retry answers 409 when the job's current status is 'processing'. An in-flight worker must be allowed to finish or fail through its normal lifecycle, so re-enqueueing is refused; the operator can wait for completion or cancel first. This is a state-machine guard, not an error in the request itself.

Source

Thrown at src/server/routes/v1/ServerV1PostgresRoutes.ts:1463

      load: (projectId) => repo.getByIdForScope({ id, projectId, teamId }),
    });
    if (!current) return null;

    // Idempotent fast-path: already queued -> emit audit only, no DB writes.
    if (current.status === 'queued') {
      await this.auditWrite(req, 'generation_job.retried_by_operator', current.id, current.projectId, {
        outcome: 'noop_already_queued',
        currentAttempts: current.attempts,
        requestId: req.requestId ?? null,
      });
      return { job: current, retriedCount: extractRetriedCount(current.payload), alreadyQueued: true };
    }

    if (current.status === 'processing') {
      // Refuse retry on in-flight jobs — the running worker MUST be allowed
      // to finish or fail through its normal lifecycle. Operator can wait
      // or cancel, then retry.
      res.status(409).json({
        error: 'Conflict',
        message: 'Generation job is currently processing; cancel or wait for completion before retrying',
      });
      return null;
    }

    if (current.status === 'completed') {
      // Refuse retry on already-completed jobs. The deduplication index on
      // observations (generation_key = job_id + index + content) does NOT
      // protect against re-running the provider, because LLM output is
      // non-deterministic and the second run almost always produces a
      // different content string. Replaying would persist a parallel set
      // of observations attributed to the same generation_job_id.
      // cancelGenerationJob applies the same 409 guard for the same reason.
      res.status(409).json({
        error: 'Conflict',
        message: 'Generation job already completed; retrying would duplicate observations',
      });

View on GitHub (pinned to e2d1df569a)

Solutions

1. GET /v1/jobs/:id and check status is not 'processing' before retrying
2. Wait for the worker to settle, or POST /v1/jobs/:id/cancel and then retry
3. Disable the retry action in UI/automation while status is 'processing'

// Check status before retrying
const res = await fetch(`${base}/v1/jobs/${jobId}`, { headers });
const { generationJob } = await res.json();
if (generationJob.status === 'processing') {
  // wait, or cancel first — do not retry
  return { deferred: true };
}
await fetch(`${base}/v1/jobs/${jobId}/retry`, { method: 'POST', headers });

type RetryableStatus = 'failed' | 'cancelled';
const isRetryable = (status: string): status is RetryableStatus =>
  status === 'failed' || status === 'cancelled';

Treat 409 'currently processing' as a signal to back off: re-check status on a timer and retry only once the job leaves 'processing'; never blind-retry the POST.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling retry while the generation worker holds the job — e.g. right after a failed attempt bounced it back to queued and it was picked up again, or while a dashboard shows status 'processing'.

Common situations: Retry buttons that don't refresh job status first; automation polling faster than the worker lifecycle; double-clicking retry.

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

• observation generation job status transition was not applied
• Chroma query failed - connection lost: ${errorMessage}
• sync hub push ${res.status}: ${body}
• sync hub pull ${res.status}: ${body}
• Corpus "${corpus.name}" has no session — call prime first

AI-assisted analysis of thedotmack/claude-mem@e2d1df569a (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/563aa2d43a0b71fe. Report an issue: GitHub.