Workflow Composition
When to Use This Skill
As automation pipelines grow, a single monolithic workflow becomes unmaintainable. Composition patterns let you build complex pipelines from smaller, reusable pieces. A parent workflow can spawn children, wait for their completion, and orchestrate the overall flow.
Implementation
- Extract reusable logic into separate WorkflowTemplates
- Create a parent workflow that spawns children
- Define success/failure conditions for proper status propagation
- Test each child independently before composing
Test Children First
Always test child workflows independently before composing them into a parent. Debugging failures in composed workflows is much harder than debugging standalone workflows.
Techniques
Patterns
| Pattern | Description | | --------- | ------------- | | Spawning Child Workflows | Create and wait for child workflow completion | | Parallel Execution | Run multiple workflows simultaneously | | DAG Orchestration | Dependency-based execution ordering | | Cross-Workflow Communication | Passing data and triggering decoupled workflows |
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
| Pattern | Description | | --------- | ------------- | | Spawning Child Workflows | Create and wait for child workflow completion | | Parallel Execution | Run multiple workflows simultaneously | | DAG Orchestration | Dependency-based execution ordering | | Cross-Workflow Communication | Passing data and triggering decoupled workflows |
Related Patterns
- Spawning Child Workflows
- Parallel Execution
- DAG Orchestration
- Cross-Workflow Communication