Operations Engine Fundamentals: Triggers, Runs and Approvals
An introduction to building controlled operational workflows with triggers, idempotent runs, approval gates, actions, and audit records.
The Quantin Operations Engine turns intelligence into repeatable execution. It coordinates triggers, reasoning steps, deterministic policies, approvals, and actions while keeping each run observable and recoverable.
Triggers
A trigger begins a workflow. It may be scheduled, event-driven, manually requested, or produced by another Quantin capability. Every trigger should include a stable event identifier, occurrence time, source, and scope.
Runs and idempotency
A run is one execution of a workflow version. Use an idempotency key when the same event may be delivered more than once. Repeating a request with the same key should return the existing result or safely resume it instead of duplicating actions.
Steps and state
Separate observation, reasoning, policy checks, approval, and action into visible steps. Persist only the state required to resume or audit the run. Sensitive intermediate data should follow the same access and retention rules as its source.
Approval gates
An approval gate pauses execution and presents the decision, evidence, risk, and proposed action to an authorized reviewer. Define who may approve, how long the request remains valid, and what happens after rejection or timeout.
Actions
Actions change an external system. Give each connector the minimum permissions required and validate the action payload immediately before execution. High-impact actions should use deterministic limits even when the recommendation comes from an intelligence model.
Recommended run states
queued— accepted but not started.running— actively processing.waiting_for_approval— paused for an authorized decision.succeeded— completed with recorded outputs.failed— stopped with an actionable error.cancelled— intentionally stopped before completion.
Auditability
Record the workflow version, inputs, policy decisions, approvals, connector responses, and final outcome. A run should explain both what happened and why it was allowed to happen.