A task is blocked and has nothing attached. What happened?

Blocked with no output

A blocked task normally carries the failing command’s output. When it carries nothing, the reason is recorded separately — and it is usually one of two things.

The two blocks that look alike

Muster distinguishes them because the action you take is different in each case:

• The command ran and did not pass. Exit code non-zero, output attached. Read the output; it is the raw text, not our summary of it.
• The command did not finish. It hit its ceiling and was stopped. There is no verdict to attach, because the command never produced one.

Before that distinction existed, both arrived as a sentence written into the output field, and nothing but a human eye separated “the test failed” from “the command never ended”.

When the command did not finish

The ceiling is per task, editable next to the command. Blank is five minutes; thirty is the maximum.

Ask which of these it is:

• The command is genuinely slow. A seven-minute suite against a five-minute ceiling blocks every time. Raise the ceiling on that task, or point it at a narrower command.
• The command does not terminate. npm run dev, a watcher, anything that opens a server and waits, will never exit. An acceptance command has to be one that ends. The ceiling is what keeps such a command from holding the queue open forever.

When there is no command at all

That is not a block — it is needs human review, and it is the correct outcome for work nothing can check. The task ran, the work is there, and the verdict is yours. A task that ends this way is doing what you asked when you left its command empty.

Sending a task back

Blocked tasks are never reopened by the runner on its own. Open the task, read why, and click its status dot to send it back to the queue when you have changed something.