Sume bulk items ignore on_active_run skip: allow is forced

What happens if a bulk item says on_active_run: "skip"? Nothing special. The Bulk runs docs say the bulk controller owns single-flight and executes every item with on_active_run: "allow", so sending skip or reject on an item does not stall the window on the first in-flight run of that Format. A single run is different: there skip records a terminal skipped run when another run is in flight, and reject answers 409.

The practical effect is that a script ported from single-run calls keeps working in a queue, but its de-duplication guard does not.

What still protects you from duplicates

Use the Idempotency-Key. A replay of the same key and payload returns 202 and the existing queue, and the same key with a different payload is 409 idempotency_conflict with details.queue_id. Mint a fresh key per batch; reusing last week's key with this week's list is the usual cause of the 409.

Inside one queue, de-duplicate rows yourself before you build items, since the queue will happily run two identical items.

What to use instead of skip

If you wanted skip to stop duplicate work, replace it with two guards you control. First, an idempotency key per business intent, so the same job sent twice is one queue. Second, a row table on your side that records which rows have a run in flight, so you do not put them in a second queue.

If you want to stop work already queued, cancel the child runs individually. The docs say canceling a child marks the item canceled and frees its slot for the next queued item, and that there is no cancel-queue endpoint.

None of this matters for single runs, where skip and reject behave as the Runs docs describe.

Single run versus bulk item

De-duplicate before you submit

This snippet removes repeated rows by a stable key before building the queue body, keeping the first occurrence and the original order.

rows = [
    {"sku": "mug-01", "offer": "20%"},
    {"sku": "mug-02", "offer": "20%"},
    {"sku": "mug-01", "offer": "20%"},
]
seen, items = set(), []
for r in rows:
    k = (r["sku"], r["offer"])
    if k in seen:
        continue
    seen.add(k)
    items.append({"instruction": f"Spot for {r['sku']}", "input": r})
body = {"concurrency": 4, "items": items}
assert len(body["items"]) == 2
print(len(body["items"]), "items")