CodeBuddy limits the number of concurrent agent operations to prevent resource exhaustion. When the limit is reached, additional requests are queued with priority-aware ordering and starvation prevention.

How it works

graph TB A["Agent request"] --> B{"Slot available?<br/>running < maxConcurrent"} B -->|yes| C["Acquire slot immediately<br/>Status: RUNNING"] B -->|no| D["Queue with priority<br/>Status: WAITING"] D --> E["Sorted: USER > SCHEDULED > BACKGROUND"] E --> F{"Slot freed?"} F -->|yes| G["Drain: highest priority first"] F -->|no| H["Wait (with timeout + cancellation)"] G --> C C --> I["Operation completes<br/>Release slot → drain next"]

Priority levels

Priority	Value	Use case
USER	2	Direct user actions (chat, commands)
SCHEDULED	1	Automated tasks (standups, health checks)
BACKGROUND	0	Background indexing, embedding generation

Higher-priority items are dequeued first. Within the same priority level, items are processed in FIFO order.

Starvation prevention

A background timer runs every 15 seconds. Any item that has been waiting for more than 60 seconds gets its priority boosted by 1 level. This ensures that BACKGROUND items eventually get promoted to SCHEDULED, and SCHEDULED items to USER, preventing indefinite starvation under sustained load.

Queue depth

The maximum queue depth scales with the concurrency limit:

$$\text{maxQueueDepth} = \text{maxConcurrent} \times 10$$

For example, with maxConcurrentStreams = 3, the queue holds up to 30 waiting items. Requests beyond this limit are rejected immediately.

Cancellation

Queued items support two cancellation mechanisms:

• AbortSignal — Pass an AbortSignal for cooperative cancellation
• Timeout — Set a timeoutMs deadline; the item is rejected if it hasn’t acquired a slot by then

Commands

Command	What it does
Show Agent Queue Status	Shows running and waiting items with cancel options
Cancel All Queued Agent Requests	Cancels all waiting items (running operations are not interrupted)

Status bar

The queue emits onDidChange events with a snapshot of { running, waiting, maxConcurrent }. The status bar shows:

• Agent: 2/3 — 2 slots in use out of 3
• Agent: 3/3 (2 queued) — all slots full, 2 items waiting

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Range	Description
codebuddy.agent.maxConcurrentStreams	number	3	1–10	Max concurrent agent streams

Changes to maxConcurrentStreams take effect immediately. If the limit increases, waiting items are drained into the newly available slots.