Waiting for your computer…

"Waiting for your computer…" means a job is queued for you and no runner of yours has checked in within the last two minutes. The job is safe. It waits until your runner picks it up.

How jobs queue

• Each job belongs to you. Only your own runner, using your own key, can take it.
• Jobs are taken oldest first, one at a time.
• If you have Cardinal on two computers, they never take the same job.
• While a job waits, the page uses a template written by code, so you can keep working.
• While anything is queued or running, the page checks every few seconds and refreshes when something changes.

Job states

• Queued: waiting for your runner.
• Running: your runner has it and claude is working.
• Done: the answer came back and was checked.
• Failed: something went wrong. The reason is shown under the badge.
• Cancelled: the job was called off before it ran.

If a running job goes quiet for longer than its time limit, Cardinal marks it failed with "The job timed out on your computer (no answer from claude in time)."

Getting it moving

1. Wake the computer and sign in to it. The runner only runs while you are logged in.
2. Wait a minute. The runner checks in on its own.
3. Still waiting? Open the Setup page and press "Test my setup". The Runner line says when your runner last checked in.
4. If it never checked in, see the FAQ for your computer ("Runner not picking up jobs" on a Mac, or "Runner not running" on Windows).

If the message shows a "Last seen" time, a runner did check in before; it has stopped since. If it offers "Set up the runner", no runner has ever checked in for you.