Fixing Workflow Errors with AI

Description

When a workflow step fails or logs a warning, the AI fix assistant reads that error, works out what caused it, and — when the cause is a misconfiguration of the step itself — proposes a corrected configuration and applies it once you approve. It goes beyond explaining the error: it can make the change for you.

It is part of the PlaidCloud AI Assistant and opens from the project’s Log viewer, already pointed at the step that failed.

Opening the Fix Assistant

The fix assistant lives in the project’s Log tab, beside the raw log entry:

1. Open the project and click the Log tab.
2. In the log list, select the entry for the step that failed. Its full message — including any traceback — opens in the panel on the right under the Log Message tab.
3. Switch that panel to the AI Analysis tab.

The AI Analysis chat opens already pointed at the workflow and step the selected log entry came from, so it starts diagnosing straight away — you don’t have to tell it which step failed. You can read the raw error under Log Message and chat with the assistant under AI Analysis side by side.

How It Works

1. Diagnoses — it reads the failing step’s configuration and the tables and columns it touches, and checks its claims against your data rather than guessing from the error text alone.
2. Proposes — if it finds a genuine misconfiguration, it shows you the corrected step configuration and explains plainly what it changed and why. Nothing is saved at this point.
3. You approve — it waits for your go-ahead.
4. Applies — once you approve, it writes the corrected configuration to the step, through the same path the step editor uses.
5. Re-run — it tells you to re-run the step to confirm the fix.

Note

The assistant never changes your step without approval. It shows the proposed configuration first and applies it only after you explicitly confirm that change — an ambiguous reply isn’t taken as approval.

What It Can Fix

The assistant repairs the configuration of the one step the error came from — for example a mistyped column or function name, an invalid expression, a wrong data type or cast, or malformed SQL. It changes the least that fixes the error: one failure, one targeted change, with the rest of the configuration left as it was.

What It Won’t Do

Its only lever is that step’s configuration, and it is upfront when the problem lies elsewhere rather than bending an edit to look like a solution.

• It edits one step’s configuration and nothing else — it won’t create, delete, or reorder steps, create tables, edit a different step, or change your data.
• Many failures aren’t configuration problems: missing or malformed source data, an upstream step that failed first, a transient or infrastructure error, a permissions issue, broken logic inside a transform or UDF, a missing file in a document account, or a resource or timeout limit. For these it explains what it found and points you to where the real fix lives.
• Warnings are often benign and need no change — it will say so plainly rather than invent an edit.
• When it isn’t certain a change will work, it says so and names what it’s unsure about instead of presenting a guess as a certainty.

Note

The fix runs with your own permissions on the current project, so it can only change a step you could already edit yourself — and any change is reversible by re-running the assistant or editing the step directly.

Tips

• The diagnosis is grounded in your live step configuration and table metadata, so it reflects the project as it is now — not a cached or assumed shape.
• After a fix is applied, re-run the step to confirm the error is resolved.
• If the assistant says the cause is outside the step’s configuration (bad data, an upstream failure, a permissions problem), that is the answer — fix it where it actually lives rather than asking the assistant to edit the step anyway.