Actions and the action catalogue

The action catalogue is the platform's primary control boundary. A workflow can call only what the catalogue contains, and the catalogue is managed separately from workflow authoring.

What an action declares

• An input schema with types and constraints, validated before execution.
• The credential reference it resolves at execution time.
• Whether it reads or writes state. Read actions are available to diagnostic workflows by default; write actions must be explicitly permitted.
• Whether it is safe to retry, which determines resume behaviour after a failure.
• A blast-radius descriptor — how many assets a single invocation may affect.

Why there is no general shell action

An action that runs arbitrary commands has a blast radius equal to its credentials, which makes every workflow using it unreviewable. Script execution is supported, but as registered scripts with declared inputs — not as ad-hoc command strings assembled at run time.

Adding an action

1. Define the operation and its input schema.
2. Bind it to a credential reference in the secret store.
3. Classify it as read or write, and declare retry safety.
4. Set the blast-radius limit and any default approval requirement.
5. Publish it to the catalogue for the environments it is permitted in.