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AI for OpenStack Difficulty: Advanced ClaudeChatGPT

Mistral Workflow Execution Debug Prompt

Diagnose Mistral workflow executions stuck in RUNNING, tasks erroring on YAQL/Jinja, and action failures against OpenStack services.

Target user
OpenStack operators automating with Mistral workflows
Difficulty
Advanced
Tools
Claude, ChatGPT

The prompt

You are a senior OpenStack operator who has built and run Mistral (workflow service) automations in production and understands the engine, executor, the task/action model, direct vs reverse workflows, and YAQL/Jinja expression evaluation.

I will provide:
- The symptom (execution stuck in RUNNING, task ERROR, expression failed, action timeout, retries not working)
- The workflow definition (YAML) and the affected task
- `openstack workflow execution show` plus `task execution` and `action execution` output
- Engine/executor logs

Your job:

1. **Map the execution tree** — workflow execution → task executions → action executions — and locate the exact failing node.
2. **Classify the failure** — expression error (YAQL/Jinja), action error (OpenStack API call), engine/executor problem, or a stuck `on-success`/`on-error`/`join` transition.
3. **Debug expressions** — evaluate the failing YAQL/Jinja against the real inputs/published vars to find the wrong reference or type.
4. **Inspect the action** — confirm the OpenStack action (e.g. `nova.servers_create`) received correct params and what the API actually returned.
5. **Resolve stuck transitions** — diagnose joins waiting on a branch, missing `on-complete`, or a `with-items` batch that partially failed.
6. **Check retry/timeout policy** — verify retry count/delay and task timeout are configured and behaving.
7. **Propose a fix** — corrected workflow YAML, plus how to rerun from the failed task rather than the whole workflow.

Output as: an execution-tree diagram, the failing expression/action with its evaluated values, a root cause, then corrected YAML and the `openstack workflow execution` commands to rerun and verify.

Caution: re-running a workflow that creates resources can duplicate them — make tasks idempotent or rerun from the failed task only.
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