No automation engine of our own#

Decision#

Whoobe does not build a workflow engine (triggers, steps, branches, waits, retries, run log, visual editor). It provides the points where an external engine plugs in: a form or an API client sends a request to a webhook and reads back one validated word, the outcome, and the page (or the caller) acts on it. The engine (Activepieces, n8n, or anything that answers a webhook) is chosen, installed and operated by the organisation.

Why#

• It is a product, not a feature. Durable execution, retries, idempotency, dead letters, a run log and a visual editor are what engines are made of and what their teams work on full time.
• The connectors never end. An engine without integrations is empty, and each service brings its own authentication, limits and changes.
• Failures are judged harshly. A silently lost lead or a double e-mail is worse than no automation.
• Security surface. An engine that calls third parties with stored credentials on behalf of public submissions is an SSRF and secret-leak target; a separate process keeps those credentials out of the CMS.
• Licence fit. Whoobe is MIT. n8n's licence prevents bundling it; Activepieces is MIT outside its enterprise folder. Documenting both avoids the issue.

What it costs#

• Two products to learn and two places to look for a failure (the gateway log and the engine's run history).
• A second service to run, update and back up.
• The page learns one word. Richer answers need a different mechanism.
• Whoobe cannot see inside a flow. It sends the event and reads the outcome; what happens in between, and why a step failed, is in the engine's own run history. A record change reaches an engine through object events, a signed webhook with a delivery log and a form submission starts a flow the same way. Other triggers (a schedule, an outside event) are the engine's own.

When to revisit#

When customers must run automations with no second service, or a trigger needs the CMS's internal state in a transactional way, or an embeddable engine with a compatible licence appears.

Where it shows in the product#

Marketing automation, automations architecture, automations as API client scopes in the API clients guide; full reasoning in why-no-custom-automation-engine.md.