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They fail because nobody decided what happens when the model is wrong, when the API is down, when the same event arrives twice, or when a customer asks why something was sent.
Before writing anything, answer these seven.
Event (webhook, message, form) or schedule (cron)? This determines the entire shape.
Everything that can be a rule should be a rule. Models are for the parts that genuinely require judgement over language.
If a model needs your data, something must fetch it. That is an API call, a database query, or an MCP connector — with permissions attached.
Read-only is safe. Write access needs thought. Sending on a customer's behalf needs an approval gate or extremely tight constraints.
Not if. A wrong internal summary is annoying. A wrong customer email is a business problem. A wrong refund is a financial one. Consequence determines how much human review you need.
Providers retry. Networks duplicate. Every write path needs an idempotency key or a duplicate check. This is the single most common production bug in this category.
Model calls, storage, compute. Multiply by realistic volume including the worst case. Many "automations" cost more than the labour they replace.
One page: trigger, steps, data, tools, failure modes, approval points, cost. It takes twenty minutes and saves weeks.
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