What it does
A workflow starts from a trigger and runs a series of steps: fetch, transform, route, notify, wait for approval. It runs unattended and records every execution.
What we run on it
Business OS runs an estate of 117 workflows across eleven businesses, namespaced per business so a new venture inherits routing, notification and escalation patterns instead of rebuilding them. POD Engine runs fourteen production workflows on it, with approvals handled through a chat bot so the operator's whole interface is a phone.
When it is the right tool
When the process is repeatable and rule-bound, with a trigger at the front and a clear output. It is less suited to holding an application's core state: on our own Growth Engine, the application stayed the source of truth and n8n became a stateless task runner called by webhook.
Keeping it honest
Every workflow should report what ran, what it cost and what it decided, so failures are visible rather than silent.