Automation with guardrails
How to automate messy workflows without turning them into brittle black boxes.
Reliability • Operations • Systems
Automation works best when it’s boring.
Defaults
- Idempotent actions: safe to retry; no double-charging, no duplicate writes
- Readable logs: a human can follow what happened and why
- Dry-run mode: preview changes before touching production data
- Explicit failure states: if it fails, it fails loudly and recoverably
Practical notes
- Treat integrations as unreliable (timeouts, rate limits, partial responses)
- Prefer append-only history over in-place edits where it matters
- Add small checkpoints so long jobs can resume safely
If a workflow depends on automation, it deserves the same care as the product UI.