Failure-path preflight
Makes each action's declared error destination visible before the workflow is implemented.
Day 055 / n8n / Workflow Automation
Retry and Error Workflow Map
/ Overview
A dependency-free Python CLI that maps success, retry and failure paths in a sanitized workflow definition before implementation.
Automation failures are harder to reason about when success paths, retries and terminal error handling are documented separately or only exist inside a visual editor. A small preflight map needs to expose structural gaps without executing the workflow or collecting payload data.
/ Provided servicesClear thinking.
Clear thinking.
Practical delivery.
Graph consistency checks
Finds unreachable nodes, missing handlers and retry paths that do not return to an action.
Data-minimized reporting
Works from node identifiers and connections only, with no payload values, credentials or remote execution.
/ Solution
Retry and Error Workflow Map validates one bounded local JSON definition, traverses its directed graph from the trigger, inventories success and error connections, and flags unreachable nodes, actions without error paths, invalid error targets, retries that do not return to an action, and non-terminal handlers. It emits deterministic text or JSON with workflow-friendly exit codes. It does not execute n8n, call webhooks, inspect credentials, evaluate retry timing or prove that a workflow is operationally safe.
/ Impact
Four explicit node kinds
Success and failure path inventory
Reachability analysis
Six structural issue codes
100-node and 100 KB limits
Duplicate-key rejection
Text and JSON reports
Ten standard-library tests
Python standard library
Argparse, JSON, pathlib and typed data structures provide a dependency-free offline CLI.
Directed graph traversal
Bounded depth-first traversal calculates reachability across success and error connections.
Unittest
Ten tests cover valid maps, every structural issue family, duplicate keys, unknown references and text output.