---
id: "0005"
date: 2026-02-22
status: Accepted
supersedes:
superseded-by:
affected-paths: [taskq/execution.py, taskq/queue.py]
affected-components: [execution, queue]
---

# 0005 — Failed jobs escalate to human review queue after retries exhausted

## Context

Silent failures (permanent errors after backoff exhausted) left operators unaware of issues.

## Decision

Jobs that exhaust exponential backoff retries move to a human-review queue (distinct from main job queue). Operators review and manually retry or discard.

## Consequences

No silent failures. Audit trail of manual interventions. Requires monitoring of review queue. Escalated jobs delay final resolution.

## Alternatives rejected

Automatic retry cap with notification rejected: operators would ignore generic alerts. Dead-letter file (unstructured) rejected: hard to query/monitor.