Task Initialization State Design

[coolbeevip]

Currently, in camel/tasks/task.py, the default state for a new Task is set to TaskState.FAILED. This seems counterintuitive, as a freshly created task should not be considered failed.

Current Implementation

state: TaskState = TaskState.FAILED  # TODO: Add logic for OPEN in workforce.py

Suggestions

1. Use OPEN as the Default State

We could change the default state to TaskState.OPEN, which better reflects the typical task lifecycle. A new task should start in an "open" or "pending" state, ready to be processed.

state: TaskState = TaskState.OPEN

2. Introduce an IDLE State

Alternatively, we could introduce an IDLE state to represent tasks that have just been created but are not yet activated or assigned. This provides a clearer distinction between a task that is simply created and one that is actively being processed.

class TaskState(str, Enum):
    IDLE = "IDLE"
    OPEN = "OPEN"
    RUNNING = "RUNNING"
    DONE = "DONE"
    FAILED = "FAILED"
    DELETED = "DELETED"

# Default initialization
state: TaskState = TaskState.IDLE

Benefits:

• Clearer lifecycle management and semantics.
• Easier to distinguish between tasks that are "inactive" (IDLE) and those "ready for work" (OPEN).