Im somewhat at my google-fu end. I can’t see a reason why i would get “The conditional check ‘XYZ.results[item] is success’ failed. The error was: The ‘failed’ test expects a dictionary”. It works with list a of numbers but not a list of strings?
If i add prints statement and compare the outputs, the only notable differences are different item names.

Maybe their is a better and correct way to loop over hosts, if host needs to be pve?

This works.

- name: Clone Virtual Machine
  community.general.proxmox_kvm:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    name: "{{ '%s%02d' | format(hostvars[groups['docker_swarm'][0]]['target_name_prefix'], item | int + 1) }}"
    newid: "{{ '%d' | format(hostvars[groups['docker_swarm'][0]]['first_id'] + item) }}"
    node: PVENODE

    clone: debian12-genericcloud
    storage: local-zfs
    state: present
  register: vm_clone
  loop: "{{ range(0, hostvars[groups['docker_swarm'][0]]['target_count'] | int, 1) | list }}"

- name: Check if VM is present
  when: vm_clone.results[item] is success
  community.general.proxmox_vm_info:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    node: PVENODE
    vmid: "{{ vm_clone.results[item].vmid }}"
  until: >
    vm_present is defined and
    vm_present.proxmox_vms is defined
  retries: 60
  delay: 1
  register: vm_present
  loop: "{{ range(0, hostvars[groups['docker_swarm'][0]]['target_count'] | int, 1) | list }}"

and also this

- name: Check if VM is present
  community.general.proxmox_vm_info:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    node: "{{ hostvars[groups['windows'][item]].vars.node }}"
    vmid: "{{ hostvars[groups['windows'][item]].vars.vmid }}"
  until: >
    vm_present is defined and
    vm_present.proxmox_vms is defined
  retries: 60
  delay: 1
  register: vm_present
  loop: "{{ range(0, groups['windows'] | length, 1) | list }}"

- name: Start VM
  when: vm_present.results[item] is success
  community.general.proxmox_kvm:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    vmid: "{{ hostvars[groups['windows'][item]].vars.vmid }}"
    node: PVENODE
    state: started
  register: vm_started
  loop: "{{ range(0, groups['windows'] | length, 1) | list }}"

But not this

- name: Check if VM is present
  community.general.proxmox_vm_info:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    node: "{{ hostvars[item].vars.node }}"
    vmid: "{{ hostvars[item].vars.vmid }}"
  until: >
    vm_present is defined and
    vm_present.proxmox_vms is defined
  retries: 60
  delay: 1
  register: vm_present
  loop: "{{ groups.windows }}"

- name: Start VM
  when: vm_present.results[item] is success
  community.general.proxmox_kvm:
    api_host: ANYPVEHOST
    api_user: APIPVEUSER@pve
    api_token_id: PVETOKEN
    api_token_secret: "{{ PVETOKENSECRET }}"

    vmid: "{{ hostvars[item].vars.vmid }}"
    node: PVENODE
    state: started
  register: vm_started
  loop: "{{ groups.windows }}"