Dispatchready

Dispatchready refers to a state in a dispatching subsystem where the system is prepared to assign and route tasks to workers in a distributed environment. It implies that prerequisites are satisfied, including available worker capacity, healthy connections to message queues or task brokers, and the correct configuration and routing rules being loaded.

In practice, dispatch readiness is achieved through continuous health monitoring and a bootstrap sequence that initializes services, validates credentials, and warms caches. A dispatcher becomes dispatch-ready when its internal task queues or thread pools are initialized, the scheduling component is active, and the system can serialize and deserialize tasks accurately. The readiness state often depends on up-to-date routing policies and the ability to reach required downstream services.

Readiness is distinct from liveness. Readiness probes indicate whether the dispatcher can accept traffic and begin dispatching immediately, while liveness checks detect ongoing failures that might require recovery. If the system is not ready, traffic is typically withheld or redirected to prevent misrouting or task loss, and automated recovery processes may be triggered.

A typical dispatch-ready architecture includes a task queue or message broker, a dispatcher that routes tasks to worker pools, a router applying routing rules, and observability components exposing metrics such as queue depth, dispatch latency, and success rates. The design often supports dynamic scaling and back-pressure to maintain throughput while preserving readiness under varying load.

Use cases include job processing, real-time event handling, and background task execution. Effective management of dispatch readiness helps ensure predictable task throughput and fault-tolerant operation, while misconfigurations can cause delayed readiness or false positives. See also readiness, deployment readiness, and fault tolerance.