---
title: Interpreting platform status
description: How to read the ops overview and status payloads correctly — which "empty" values are normal idle states and which actually mean trouble.
locale: en
version: 0.2.0
canonical: https://enterium-developer-docs.pages.dev/developers/mcp/interpreting-status/
---

> Documentation index: https://enterium-developer-docs.pages.dev/developers/llms.txt — every page of this portal has a Markdown twin at <route>.md; the frozen API contract is at https://enterium-developer-docs.pages.dev/developers/api/openapi.json.

Agents that read the platform's status endpoints often misread **normal idle
states as failures**. This page lists the interpretation rules. When your
conclusion is "the platform is broken", check this table before reporting.

## Rules

| You see | It means | It is NOT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `orchestrator.present: false` / `alive: false` | **Normal idle.** Production has no permanently-running orchestrator daemon; generation runs on a nightly timer | An outage. Alarm only when `present: true` **and** `alive: false` (a heartbeat went stale) |
| `velocity: 0`, `in_flight: 0` | No run is active right now | A stuck queue |
| `contracts[].remaining` > 0 | Generation candidates the nightly batch will work through under its daily cap | A backlog of failures, or an embeddings queue |
| A quiet period during the day | The nightly run finished; the next one starts on the timer | A dead scheduler |

## Where to look for the real execution funnel

- The **cycles** domain (see `list_domains`) shows the actual run funnel:
  what was dispatched, what completed, what failed.
- Recent failures live in the error surface: `GET /api/v1/errors`
  (see [How to read errors](../../guides/reading-errors/)).
- Every run is recorded as `pipeline_run` with per-step `run_step` rows —
  a run that failed is visible there, not inferred from idle status.

## The golden interpretation rule

**Meaning lives in payload values.** When a status field carries a `note`
alongside a number, the note is authoritative context — quote it in your
report instead of inventing an explanation for the number.