Lobster Workflows

Typed, deterministic multi-step pipelines with human approval gates and resumable execution tokens.

• Design workflows as linear pipelines: each step produces typed output consumed by the next step.
• Insert wait-for-input nodes at approval gates. Pass a resumeToken to allow humans to continue or cancel the workflow later.
• Each pipeline step should be idempotent — if the workflow is resumed after approval, the step must produce the same result given the same input.
• Use error-handler nodes around external API calls (email send, file write, webhook) to catch failures without aborting the entire pipeline.
• Approval gate pattern: claude-agent (classify/prepare) → wait-for-input (show classification to human) → if-else (approved?) → claude-agent (execute) → send-webchat (confirm).
• Example: Email triage pipeline — http_request fetch inbox → classify messages by urgency → wait-for-input to confirm batch → send replies → store sent log.
• Store workflow state at each approval checkpoint in memory using type event with the resume token as content.
• For time-sensitive workflows: use delay nodes between steps to pace execution and avoid overwhelming downstream services.
• Track pipeline progress by emitting a board-task status update at each major stage.