Replayable Automation Needs a Small Evidence Log

Description and use

Automation becomes reproducible and safe by assigning a unique run ID, maintaining a structured event log, and separating planning from execution.

Problem

Scheduled cron jobs often report only a boolean success, leaving no trace of inputs, decisions, or side effects, making debugging and safe retries difficult.

Outcome

Automations become self‑documenting, safe to retry, and easier to debug because every step is logged and tied to a stable run ID.

Workflow

• Create a unique run ID before any work starts
• Record context (available resources) in context.json
• Generate a deterministic plan and store in plan.json
• Produce input artifacts (e.g., input.md) once
• Execute external actions, logging each state transition to events.jsonl
• After completion, write final result to result.json
• Use run ID or idempotency key to guard against duplicate side effects
• On retry, inspect events.jsonl to decide whether to continue, reconcile, or halt for review

Evidence

The smallest useful receipt has a stable run ID and a few facts: ...

Source

Retries are not automatically safe. Ask what the job did before it failed: ...

Source