Understanding stale claims
A stale claim is an item stuck in running because a publish was interrupted. Recovery is manual on purpose, because the post may already be live.
Last updated June 14, 2026
When the scheduler claims an item it moves to running. Almost always it finishes within seconds. If a tick is killed after the claim but before the outcome is recorded, the item stays running — that's a stale claim.
Signal surfaces a running item that has been claimed for too long as a stale claim rather than automatically re-publishing it. The reason is safety: the provider call may have actually succeeded before the interruption, so auto-retrying could double-post. Recovery is deliberately a manual decision.
Step by step
- 1Check the platform
Look at the target account. Did the post actually go out? The claim records enough detail to investigate.
- 2Recover deliberately
If it didn't publish, retry it. If it did, mark it resolved so it isn't published again.
Common mistakes
- !Force-retrying a stale claim without checking the platform first — that's exactly how a double-post happens.