Progressive Execution

The magic of Contexts: rules run automatically when their inputs are ready.

You don't schedule rule execution. You don't poll for completeness. You submit facts as they arrive, and the rules that can run will run.

How It Works

When you bind a rule to a context, Rulebricks knows what inputs that rule needs. When you submit a fact:

All derived facts that depend on it recalculate
The system checks if any bound rules now have all their required inputs
Rules that are ready execute automatically
Their outputs write back to the context as new facts

This happens in a single API response—you submit employment_verified: true, and you get back the approval decision your rule computed.

Cascading Execution

Rules can write facts that other rules depend on. This creates automatic chains:

Submit: credit_score = 720
        ↓
  [Risk Assessment Rule] executes
        ↓
Writes: risk_tier = "low"
        ↓
  [Pricing Rule] executes (was waiting for risk_tier)
        ↓
Writes: rate = 4.5, max_amount = 500000

You submitted one fact. Three derived values appeared. This cascade happens within a single request—no webhooks, no polling, no orchestration code.

The response tells you what ran:

{
  "status": "complete",
  "cascaded": [
    { "rule": "risk-assessment", "result": { "risk_tier": "low" } },
    { "rule": "pricing", "result": { "rate": 4.5, "max_amount": 500000 } }
  ]
}

Execution Modes

When binding a rule to a context, choose how it executes:

Mode	When it runs
Enabled	Automatically when all inputs are present
Manual	Only when you explicitly call `/solve`
Disabled	Won't run (useful for staged rollouts)

💡

Manual mode is useful when you want to control timing precisely—for example, waiting for human approval before running a disbursement rule.

Deterministic Order

When multiple rules can execute, they run in dependency order—a rule that writes risk_tier always runs before a rule that reads it. If rules have no dependencies, execution order is stable but arbitrary.

If a rule fails, the cascade stops and the error is returned. Other facts already written in that request remain—partial progress is preserved.

Live Contexts Creating a Context