# Progress Report: 2025-08-29

## Overview

Today's work focused on improving the robustness, testability, and developer experience of the `mojo.apps.tasks` module. Key achievements include refactoring task decorators, enhancing the local task queue, adding comprehensive tests, and fixing a critical bug in the application startup process.

## Key Changes

### 1. Task Decorator Refactoring
- **Moved `async_task`**: The `async_task` decorator was moved from the `tasks`' `__init__.py` into a new, dedicated module: `mojo/apps/tasks/decorators.py`.
- **Created `async_local_task`**: A new decorator, `async_local_task`, was created to provide a simple way to run functions in the background using the in-memory local queue.
- **Resolved Circular Imports**: Fixed a circular dependency issue that arose from the refactoring by using local imports within the decorators.

### 2. Local Task Queue Enhancements & Testing
- **Improved Logging**: The local queue worker in `local_queue.py` now uses a dedicated logger (`tasks_local`) and calls `logger.exception()` to automatically capture stack traces on task failure.
- **Added Tests**: A new test file, `tests/test_tasks/local.py`, was created to validate the functionality of `publish_local`, including success cases and safety checks (e.g., preventing Django model instances from being passed as arguments).

### 3. Robustness and Bug Fixes
- **Database Connection Handling**: Added `close_old_connections()` to the `finally` block of the Redis-based task runner (`runner.py`) to prevent stale database connection errors in the thread pool.
- **Fixed `AppConfig` Loading**: Diagnosed and fixed a bug in `mojo/apps/tasks/apps.py` where the local task worker thread was not starting in `manage.py shell` or `manage.py test`. The incorrect check for the `RUN_MAIN` environment variable was removed, ensuring the `ready()` method now correctly initializes the background thread in all relevant environments.

## Outcome

The task system is now more robust, easier to use, and better tested. The `AppConfig` fix ensures that the local task queue is reliably available across different management commands, improving the consistency of the development and testing environments.
