18:42 — the studio goes home.Wrangle

The farm runs all night.
Now someone’s watching it.

Wrangle sits on top of AWS Deadline Cloud and works the overnight — it triages failed renders, requeues within your policy, and asks on Slack before it spends a dollar.

Start free — monitor tonight Watch one night →

22:30

The studio is asleep. The farm is not.

Four jobs on the queue, three hundred machines rendering, nobody in the building. On a good night this page is boring — and you can watch it be boring for free.

The monitor is free, forever. No card, no agent, just eyes on the farm.

Wrangle Monitor · aws-deadlinequeue: show_prod

job	frames	progress	status
SHO_0470_lighting_v012	1001–1240	62%	RUNNING
SHO_0512_fx_v004	1001–1096	38%	RUNNING
SHO_0430_comp_v007	1001–1118	0%	QUEUED
SHO_0221_anim_v019	1001–1300	100%	DONE

23:47

A render dies.

SHO_0470_lighting_v012chunk 1089–1104FAILED

[23:47:12] task-2025-08-18-1089 stderr License checkout failed: arnold (error -5: no licenses available) task exited 210 · frames 1089–1104 5 sibling chunks failed the same checkout · 96 frames total (1009–1104)

At most studios, this is where someone’s evening ends.

23:49

Nightshift picks it up.

Nightshift reads the log the way a wrangler would. It saw a license checkout failure — not a broken scene — so there was nothing to fix, only frames to resubmit. It checked your requeue policy, split the failed chunk, and put 96 frames back on the farm. The whole decision is in the thread, timestamped, in plain English.

#render-farm · reconstructed thread

Nightshift APP 23:49

SHO_0470_lighting_v012 failed on 6 chunks — 96 frames, 1009–1104. The log says license checkout: the arnold pool was exhausted at 23:47. The scene is fine. Nothing to fix.

CLASSIFICATION — license failure, not scene error

Nightshift APP 23:49

Your requeue policy allows resubmit ×2 on license failures. Split the failed chunk and put all 96 frames back on show_prod.

POLICY CHECK — requeue ×2 permitted

Nightshift APP 23:52

On-demand capacity is full until ~06:00. Spot gets these back by ~02:30 for about $41.20 — that’s over your $25 auto-cap, so I’ll ask before spending.

DECISION — hold for approval, over auto-cap

00:58

It asks before it spends.

Nightshift asks first, every time real money is on the line. Your cap, your call, from your phone.

Nightshift · spend approval · 00:58

~$41.20 · 96 frames · spot

Resubmit SHO_0470_lighting_v012 frames 1009–1104 on spot. Estimated done ~02:30. Over your $25 auto-cap.

02:15

Frames come back.

SHO_0470_lighting_v012 · 1009–1104 · 96 frames · 6 per tick

#render-farm · reconstructed thread

Nightshift APP 02:15

First frames back. 1009–1032 done, the rest are cooking. On track for ~02:30.

Slack triage is on the free tier too. Approvals are where the paid shift starts.

04:30

The night, accounted for.

SHOT	TASK	ARTIST	FRAMES TONIGHT	COST	PER FINAL FRAME
SHO_0470	lighting_v012	R. Okafor	240	$103.00	$0.43
incl. 96-frame requeue · 1009–1104 · spot · $41.20 · approved 01:03
SHO_0430	comp_v007	M. Ferreira	118	$31.86	$0.27
SHO_0512	fx_v004	T. Anand	96	$55.68	$0.58
SHO_0221	anim_v019	J. Whitcombe	300	$48.00	$0.16
show_prod			754	$238.54

Every frame the farm rendered tonight is joined to a shot in Flow. By morning you know what SHO_0470 actually cost — per version, per artist, per final frame — without exporting a single CSV. When a client asks why the comp overage happened, the answer is already a line item.

07:30

You open Slack.

Nightshift · morning summaryshow_prod · Mon → Tue

23:47SHO_0470_lighting_v012 failed — arnold license checkout, 96 frames (1009–1104).

23:49Classified as a license failure, not a scene error. Scene untouched. Requeued within policy.

00:58Asked before spending: ~$41.20 · 96 frames · spot. You approved from your phone at 01:03.

02:15First frames back. All 96 done by 02:34.

04:30Night ledger posted — every frame joined to its shot in Flow.

total754 frames rendered · $238.54 · 0 renders lost · 0 wake-ups.

“The first morning, I kept waiting for the bad news. There wasn’t any.”

Head of Production, 40-seat studio

Morning

Find finished frames in the morning.

Monitor

Free, forever

The live farm monitor, on any browser
Slack notifications with frame previews
Read-only — it never touches your queue

Studio

$349 / farm / month

Per-shot cost attribution, joined to Flow
Bid vs. actual, burn forecasts, anomaly alerts
Everything in Monitor, included

Nightshift

+$499 / farm / month

Policy requeues, chunk splitting, retries
Spend approvals with your auto-cap
Morning summary & the night ledger, joined to Flow

Will it spend money without asking?No. Anything over your cap is an explicit Slack approval. Holds cost nothing.Priced per farm?Yes — not per seat. Your render spend is yours; we never mark up AWS.