Conditions and branches

Model conditional paths and merge strategies in workflows.

Branches let workflows mirror real decisions: approvals vs auto-reject, regional routing, or parallel reviews that must all pass. Invest time in condition clarity—ambiguous logic becomes expensive to debug under load.

Conditions

Express rules with comparisons on fields, regex, and presence checks. Prefer explicit comparisons over implicit truthiness so empty strings and nulls behave predictably.

Short-circuit behavior

Know whether conditions evaluate lazily. If expensive checks run even when a prior clause already failed, you may hit rate limits unnecessarily.

Testing matrices

Build a small table of inputs and expected branches before go-live. Include malformed payloads your API might emit during incidents.

Branches

Run mutually exclusive branches or parallel branches that join later. Parallel paths reduce latency but require clear merge semantics when both sides finish out of order.

Dependencies

If branch B needs artifacts from branch A, enforce ordering with explicit dependencies rather than hoping wall-clock timing works out.

Merge

Define how conflicting branch outputs combine—first wins, merge maps, or custom reducers. Document the merge rule in the workflow description so the next editor does not “simplify” it incorrectly.

Conflicts

When two branches set the same field, specify precedence. Last-write-wins is easy but surprising; structured merges are safer for financial totals.