> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.aloop.icustomer.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.aloop.icustomer.ai/reference/pulse-families.md).

# Pulse families

The pulse family catalog: Opportunity, Stall (with its five edges), and Milestone, with examples of each.

Every pulse belongs to exactly one family. Three families cover everything the system raises.

| Family          | The moment                                                                  | Examples                                                                                               |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Opportunity** | Something good is happening. Act before the window closes                   | A target account is back on your pricing page, a hot reply landed, someone raised their hand on a form |
| **Stall**       | An edge of the loop cannot advance. The reason and the remedy come attached | A sync is failing, a play is waiting at its gate for your approval, a connector lost authorization     |
| **Milestone**   | A first, worth marking                                                      | First audience activated, first outcome attributed, a target reached                                   |

## The five stall edges

Anyone can build the path where everything works. What matters is what you see when something doesn't. At every step of [the loop](/getting-started/the-loop.md), the platform either advances or tells you exactly what's in the way, and every stall names the edge it fired from:

| Edge             | Stalls when                                                        | What you get                                                                                  |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Goal → KPI       | Nothing under the goal is readable                                 | The goal marked locked, the connector that opens it, and how many KPIs and plays that unlocks |
| KPI → Target     | No achievable move, or the window is shorter than your sales cycle | "No target here yet," naming which of baseline, reference, or portfolio is missing            |
| Target → Play    | Capacity, a missing connector, or missing required data            | A setup proposal: what to connect or configure, and what it would make possible               |
| Play → Outcome   | Plays ran and nothing landed                                       | A prompt to re-diagnose. Never a second play stacked on the same theory                       |
| Outcome → Target | Identity doesn't resolve                                           | The outcome counted, credited to nothing, and reported                                        |

Refusing to set a target is a feature. Any tool will happily produce a number. Saying "we won't guess, and here's what would let us know" is the more useful answer, and it's what the system actually believes rather than a bit of interface politeness.

A stall that needs your click (an approval, a merge proposal, a gated play) is still a stall: the human is the remedy. A stall that fires early (credit pacing, "you run out by this date") is a forecast of the same shape.

## Mode and origin

* **Mode.** A pulse is either **decide** (it needs an action from you) or **inform** (it tells you something worth knowing and folds into the digest). Only decide pulses can interrupt.
* **Origin.** Pulses are generated at the moment they fire, from what the system actually observed. Pre-written sequences, like onboarding nudges, are lifecycle email, not pulses.

How the queue behaves, and how families relate to the app's tabs, lives in [Families](/pulse/families.md). Acting on a pulse is covered in [Acting on a pulse](/pulse/acting.md).


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