> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cognite.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

> ## Agent Instructions
> Cognite Data Fusion (CDF) is an industrial DataOps platform. English is the canonical locale unless the reader asks for another.
> The documentation catalog is https://docs.cognite.com/llms.txt. Subgroup indexes live under https://docs.cognite.com/_llms/. Each published page has a Markdown twin at the same path with a .md suffix.
> REST APIs: calendar version 20230101 is stable. Preview versions are 20230101-beta and 20230101-alpha, for clients already on a preview API. Concept pages are under /api-reference/concepts/<version>/. Versioned requests use the Cdf-Version header. The default SDK is the Python SDK (cognite-sdk). JavaScript and TypeScript projects use the JavaScript SDK.
> Topic hubs: platform overview /cdf/index.md; data modeling /cdf/dm/index.md; data integration /cdf/integration/index.md; access /cdf/access/index.md; Cognite Toolkit /cdf/deploy/cdf_toolkit/index.md; REST quickstart /dev/quickstart.md; Python SDK /dev/sdks/python/index.md; Atlas AI /cdf/atlas_ai/concepts/index.md; Flows apps /cdf/flows/index.md; Aura UI /cdf/aura/index.md; MCP and IDE setup /dev/guides/ide_ai_integration.md.

# Tasks

> Track integration task run history and sync updates in Cognite Data Fusion (CDF).

Tasks represent the discrete units of work an integration performs, such as a single configured query in a database extractor. CDF tracks each task's run history, including when it started and stopped. You can list task history or sync updates since a previous checkpoint.

A task is a named unit of work in an integration, reported by the extractor. Each time a task starts or stops, the extractor reports it in a check-in request, and CDF records a history entry so you can spot gaps or failures.

## Listing and syncing history

You can list task history for an integration, optionally filtered by task name, to see when tasks ran. For applications that need to keep up with changes incrementally, sync returns task history and error updates since the last sync. Use a cursor to avoid re-reading data you have already seen.

<Info>
  Use sync rather than repeatedly listing history when you are building a live dashboard or alerting system. Sync is designed for incremental polling.
</Info>

## Key operations

* **List history**: Retrieve task run history for an integration, optionally filtered by task name.
* **Sync**: Fetch task and error updates since a previous cursor.

Task history is the record CDF uses to answer "Is this extractor doing what it's supposed to do?"