Activities and Jobs

Activity

An activity is a reusable execution unit. Schema v2 activities declare schemaVersion: 2, kind: Activity, metadata, and a typed spec.

Supported activity types:

Type	Use
`agent_loop`	Run an agent with an instruction, provider, backend, and tool allowlist. v1 only supports `backend: cli`, but the schema default for `backend:` is `http` — pin `cli` explicitly.
`groundhog`	Run checkpointed HTTP agent attempts with reset and retry behavior. Not part of the v1 release surface — depends on the HTTP transport.
`deterministic`	Run a registered deterministic action.
`shell`	Run an allowlisted shell program.

Job

A job is a workflow. It has schedule state, optional default input, concurrency limits, and ordered steps.

Step bodies can reference an activity, inline an activity spec, or compose control flow:

target: activity:<name>
spec: ...
parallel
fan_out and fan_in
loop

Why Both Exist

Activities make execution behavior reusable. Jobs make orchestration explicit. This keeps the dispatch surface inspectable and avoids hiding agent behavior inside code.

Example: A job step referencing a reusable activity.

schemaVersion: 2
kind: Activity
name: analyze_code
spec:
  backend: cli
  provider: gemini
  model: gemini-3.1-pro
  instruction: "Analyze the provided code."

---
# .orbit/jobs/review_pr.yaml
schemaVersion: 2
kind: Job
name: review_pr
steps:
  - id: analysis
    target: activity:analyze_code