Running workflows and finding the results

This page explains what happens after you press Run on a workflow: how the run is queued, what the step statuses mean, how retries and review loops behave, how to stop a run, and where the finished video and the other results end up.

Starting a run

You start a workflow from its page in the project (Workflows tab, open the workflow, click Run). A run never starts on a single click: a confirmation box opens first.

• The box lists every step in plain words ("Watches your footage", "Writes the narration") and roughly how long the run takes, based on your earlier runs of the same workflow.
• It always offers Your brief: free text passed to every AI agent in the run as extra instructions ("keep it under a minute", "show our pricing page in the phone screen"). It is optional unless the workflow has Require a brief before each run switched on.
• It also offers an Editing style (how the AI should cut the video) and a one-click Video shape (9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 16:9) for this run only; see Editing styles and video shape.
• Click Start run. The run appears in the workflow's Run history immediately, numbered Run 1, Run 2… with the first line of its brief, and ReelBolt opens its live run page.
• If the workflow contains a VideoGenerate step (paid AI video clips), ReelBolt asks whether to reuse previously generated clips (free, the default) or Regenerate them (costs money). The dialog shows the most it could cost: the sum of the video steps' spending caps.

You can also ask the assistant to run a workflow for you.

The queue and run statuses

A new run is first Queued, then Running. The platform runs a limited number of workflows at the same time (4 by default, set by the administrator); extra runs wait in the queue and start by themselves when a slot frees up. A run can take from minutes (a short edit) to over an hour (a promo whose agents write and render a lot of code).

A run ends in one of these statuses (the run page shows them as Finished, Failed and Stopped):

Status	Meaning
Passed	Every step finished.
Failed	A step failed (after any automatic retries), so the run stopped there. The error is shown on the run page.
Cancelled	The run was stopped, by you or by the system. The run page says who or why.

Step statuses

Each step in a run shows its own status:

Status	Meaning
Pending	Not reached yet.
Running	Working now. Long steps show live progress messages (for example "Tracking insert regions" or "Encoding").
Completed	Finished. Click it to see what it produced.
Failed	Did not finish; the error details explain why.
Skipped	Not run because its agent could not be found — for example a step using a custom agent (custom agents cannot run in workflows yet).

A step that was reused from an earlier identical run is marked as coming from cache (see "Reusing earlier results" below).

Following a run live

The run page updates live while the run is going: step statuses change, progress messages appear for long steps (video analysis, encoding, clip generation), and room steps (EditRoom, GraphicsRoom, ColorGradeRoom) show each panel member's turn as it happens. Progress messages are for information only; a step is only done when its status says Completed.

The top of the run page names the run ("Run 3 · 4 Oct, 14:02"), says in plain words what is happening now ("Writing the narration…"), and estimates the time left from how long the finished steps took — an estimate, since rendering steps usually take longer than the rest. If any step reported a problem you should know about (narration lines that could not be placed, no music because the project has no audio files, a video much shorter than the length you asked for, a narration voice that is not working), a yellow box at the very top says so, even when the run finished. Token counts, the live-connection state and each step's raw data are under Details.

Automatic retries

ReelBolt retries some failures by itself before giving up:

• AI agent steps (Agent, ReviewLoop, ForEach, Parallel) and ColorGradeRoom, VideoGenerate and Voiceover steps get up to 3 attempts by default (the administrator can change this). When an agent's answer has the wrong shape, the retry tells the agent what was wrong. Waits between attempts grow a little each time.
• An agent that runs out of time is not retried, because a retry would just repeat the same long work. The error says it timed out; an operator can raise that agent's time limit.
• Extract, VideoAnalyze, VideoCompile, EditRoom and GraphicsRoom steps are not retried as a whole: they would fail the same way again, or redo minutes of video processing for nothing. (Speech-to-text inside VideoAnalyze, and the director's final write-up inside the room steps, have their own small retries.)
• If an agent deliberately stops the run (its "stop the run" tool), there is no retry.

When a step still fails after its attempts, the whole run is marked Failed.

Review loops

A ReviewLoop step is a quality check. A reviewing agent scores the work out of 10:

• At or above the step's passing score (minScore), the run continues.
• Below it, the run jumps back to an earlier step (loopTargetStepOrder) and redoes everything from there, with the reviewer's comments handed to the redone steps.
• After maxIterations rounds the run continues anyway with the latest result; a low final score does not fail the run.

In the footage templates the loop goes back to step 2 (the editing decision), so the analysis is not repeated; in the promo templates it goes back to the AuthorAgent step, which re-renders.

Stopping a run

Press Stop on the run page while it is running. The run stops at the next safe point and ends as Cancelled, recorded as stopped by you. Work already finished (for example a clip already generated) is kept.

Retrying a run

When a run has ended (Passed, Failed or Cancelled), Run again on the run page starts the same run again from step 1, with the same request text. Steps whose inputs did not change may be reused from cache, so a retry is usually faster than the first run. If the workflow generates paid clips, Run again asks again whether to reuse them or pay for new ones.

To change something before trying again, edit the workflow, save, and start a new run.

Where the results end up

Different steps produce different kinds of results. Click any completed step on the run page to see its result panel.

• Videos. A step that produced a video shows it in a Video from this step player on its result panel. All videos produced in the project also appear in the project's Renders tab (and in "Latest renders" on the Overview). These include the finished promo from the AuthorAgent step, the edited video from a VideoCompile step, generated clips from a VideoGenerate step, and the graphics or insert scenes a MotionGraphicsPlanner step rendered.
• Edited video as a project file. By default a VideoCompile step also adds its result to the project's Files (registerProjectFile, on by default), so you can use it as the source of a new edit. Each run keeps one file there: when a review loop re-edits the video, or a step is retried, the newer video replaces the older one in Files (a workflow that always uses the same file name also replaces the previous run's file). The older videos are not deleted; you still find them on their run's page and in Renders.
• Detailed records. VideoAnalyze, VideoCompile and VideoGenerate steps also keep a large detailed record (the full analysis, the full edit list, or the list of generated clips), shown on the step's Data tab, which appears once you open Details on the run page. These are information, not videos.
• Timeline. A VideoCompile step's result offers Open in Editor, an interactive timeline that shows the cuts, graphics and audio of the edit.
• Summaries. Each step's text result is shown in its panel. For a VideoCompile step it says what was applied and what was skipped and why (for example a graphic or insert that could not be used), so check it when something you expected is missing from the video.
• Room discussions. The room steps keep their panel's discussion so you can read how the decision was reached. It is for information only.

Where earlier takes of a video went

Every time a workflow runs again, or a review loop asks for another edit, the video is made again. Each version is a take of the same video. So that the newest video is easy to find, the project's Renders tab and the Latest renders on the Overview show each video only once, by its latest take: the newest version from a run that has finished. A run that is still going never replaces it until it finishes.

The earlier takes are not lost:

• On the Renders tab, under the video you are watching, click N earlier takes. Each earlier take can be played and downloaded. "In-progress take" marks a version the run replaced on its way to the final one (for example a review-loop pass).
• In Files, earlier takes of your videos are hidden; click Show N earlier takes of your videos to list them too.

Cleaning up. Click the pin next to a take to keep it. Delete earlier takes deletes every earlier take of that video at once (after you confirm); the latest take and pinned takes stay. You can also delete one earlier take with its bin icon. Deleting a take removes the video file and its entry in Files for good; the run itself, and what each step reported, stay in the run's history.

Reusing earlier results (the step cache)

ReelBolt can reuse a step's earlier result instead of redoing it, when the step and everything it reads are exactly the same as in an earlier successful run (same settings, same earlier results, same request text, same project files). This saves time and AI cost, and for VideoGenerate steps it saves money.

• Reused by default: Extract, VideoAnalyze, VideoCompile, Voiceover, EditRoom, ColorGradeRoom, VideoGenerate, and Agent steps whose agent only reads.
• Never reused: agents that write code, write files or render (RemotionComponentTranslator, AuthorAgent, MotionGraphicsPlanner), GraphicsRoom, ReviewLoop, Conditional, ForEach, Parallel.
• Each step's cacheMode overrides this: Never always redoes the step, Always always allows reuse. The templates set every creative AI step to Never, so a re-run gets a fresh decision.
• A reused step shows as coming from cache on the run page.

Because one changed input changes everything after it, editing an early step's settings makes the later steps redo their work automatically.

Paid video clips: reuse or regenerate

VideoGenerate steps cost money, so ReelBolt avoids paying twice:

• Reuse is the default. When a clip with the same prompt and settings was already generated successfully (in this run or an earlier one in the project) and still exists, it is reused at no cost. This also applies when a review loop sends the run back.
• Regenerate when you run or retry the workflow to pay for fresh clips. The dialog shows the most it could cost.
• A step's loopBackBehavior set to "Regenerate" pays for fresh clips on every review-loop round after the first; the default "Reuse" does not.
• A step's cacheMode set to "Never" only stops the whole step from being replayed; individual identical clips are still reused unless you choose Regenerate.

Spending is always capped: each step's maxSpendUsd, plus daily limits per project and for the whole platform set by the administrator. If a cap would be exceeded, nothing is bought and the step fails with BUDGET_EXCEEDED. See the generated b-roll recipe.