Planned, open source, design stage

Cap the spend. Never guess a side effect.

A planned open-source queue for AI jobs, where a retry reuses finished steps and an unknown outcome stays unknown.

Tell me if this is your problem Read the design Watch the crash demo

See the code sketch Why not Temporal, Trigger.dev or DBOS?

ticket report-w42simulated, not real output

summarysaved$0.04

chartparked, job id savedpolls in 2m

publishunknown, checking the wiki page

budget$0.31 of $2.00

02 The problem

A crash costs you twice.

A retry restarts from the top. The paid call and the post both run again.

Illustration with made-up numbers

First run

AI call $0.04 Worker dies during publish

Plain retry

AI call again $0.04 Post published again

With qlane

AI call reused $0.00 Post checked, published once

$0.04spent so far

$0.08and two posts, without

$0.04and one post, with qlane

03 The fix

One workflow. Every feature.

Scroll to see what each part does.

report.weekly.tssketch

1// Design sketch: names are proposals2q.workflow("report.weekly", async (ctx, input) => {13  const summary = await ctx.step("summary", input, {24    maxTokens: 4000,5    fallback: [36      { provider: "anthropic" },7      { provider: "openai" },8    ],9    expect: (o) => o.sections.length > 0,410  }, async (i) => callModel(i));11 12  const chart = await ctx.step.async("chart", { summary }, {513    submit: (i) => imageApi.create(i),14    poll: (jobId) => imageApi.status(jobId),15    download: (jobId, r) => imageApi.fetch(r.url),16    maxWait: "30m",17  });18 19  const review = await ctx.submit("report.review",620    { id: input.id }, { dependency: true });21 22  await ctx.step("publish", { page: input.page }, {723    effect: true,24    onUnknown: "pause",25    probe: (a) => wiki.hasPost(a.page),26  }, async (a) => wiki.publish(a.page, review, chart));27 28  return chart;29});30 31await q.submit("report.weekly",832  { id: "w42", page: "team-weekly" },33  { key: "report-w42", budget: { usd: 2 } });

Design sketch, not working code; names are proposals.

1

Name it once. Every ticket of this kind runs this function.
2

A retry reuses "summary" and never pays for it again.
3

Next provider in order, without using a retry.
4

An empty or wrong-shaped result fails the step.
5

The job id is saved, so a restart resumes and never resubmits.
6

The parent waits for the child and holds no worker.
7

A crash mid-publish pauses for a check or a person.
8

One key makes a repeat call safe. The cap stops at $2 and keeps finished steps.

Ten more sketches

1Name the workflow

Name it once. Every ticket of this kind runs this function.

q.workflow("report.weekly",
  async (ctx, input) => {

2Named saved steps

A retry reuses "summary" and never pays for it again.

const summary = await ctx.step(
  "summary", input, {
    maxTokens: 4000,

3Provider fallback

Next provider in order, without using a retry.

fallback: [
  { provider: "anthropic" },
  { provider: "openai" },
],

4Expected-output check

An empty or wrong-shaped result fails the step.

expect: (o) =>
  o.sections.length > 0,

5Async provider job

The job id is saved, so a restart resumes and never resubmits.

await ctx.step.async("chart",
  { summary }, {
    submit: (i) => imageApi.create(i),
    maxWait: "30m",

6Child ticket, with dependency

The parent waits for the child and holds no worker.

await ctx.submit("report.review",
  { id: input.id },
  { dependency: true });

7Effect with unknown outcome

A crash mid-publish pauses for a check or a person.

effect: true,
onUnknown: "pause",
probe: (a) => wiki.hasPost(a.page),

8Call it, with a spend cap

One key makes a repeat call safe. The cap stops at $2 and keeps finished steps.

await q.submit("report.weekly",
  { id: "w42", page: "team-weekly" },
  { key: "report-w42",
    budget: { usd: 2 } });

Design sketch, not working code; names are proposals.

Ten more sketches

04 The crash demo

Kill the worker. Nothing repeats.

A simulation on a fake model. No API key, nothing really posted.

Simulation, not real software

qlane demo

$qlane demo

summarypaid $0.04

worker killed (kill -9)

worker restarted

summaryreused, saved $0.04

publishunknown, checking the wiki page

publishconfirmed posted, once

nothing paid twice, published once

05 Honest limits

What it will not do.

No exactly-once magic.A step in flight when a worker dies runs again.

Caps are a bound, not a wall.Calls made outside qlane can still overspend.

Not a guardrail or a gateway.No prompt filtering, retrieval, evals or proxying.

No speed pitch.The goal is reliability and cost safety.

Where it stands: design only. No code, no alpha. Read every limit

06 Your turn

Is this your problem?

Tell me what breaks today. I am not selling anything.