Recover a failed run

A failed run keeps everything it already did. Recovery means re-running the part that never finished, not starting again from the beginning.

Outcome

The run reaches completion, or you know exactly which step is blocking it and why.

Before you start

Open the run from Workflows → Monitor and find the first step with status failed. Read its Error. Everything below depends on knowing whether the failure was transient or a configuration problem.

1. Decide what kind of failure it was

Retrying a configuration problem without fixing it reproduces the same failure.

2. Retry from the failure

A failed run shows a Run again from the failure panel with a Retry Run button. The text beneath it names what will re-run — the failed step and what follows it.

Every step that finished is kept. Only the steps that never finished run again, so a run that fetched, transformed, and then failed to write does not fetch twice.

Checkpoint: the run's status changes from failed, and the steps that had already completed keep their original durations.

3. Resolve calls whose outcome is unknown

Occasionally a run stops between issuing an external call and recording what came back. Hodoflow cannot know whether that call went through, so it will not guess.

The run then shows an Unaccounted-for external calls panel above the retry:

This run stopped between issuing a call and recording what it returned. Check the provider and say what happened — running the step again is only safe once you have.

Each unresolved call is listed with its step and a key identifying it. For each one:

• Never sent — the provider has no record of it. The step is free to run again.
• Went through — the provider did receive it. The failure is kept rather than repeating the call.

A call the engine already knows is safe to repeat is marked Safe to repeat and needs no answer from you.

Retry Run stays disabled until every listed call has an answer. That is deliberate: repeating a payment or an order is worse than a stuck run.

Checkpoint: the panel is empty and Retry Run is enabled.

4. Stop it happening again

• Set a retry policy on steps that call flaky endpoints, so a blip never reaches this page. See Retries.
• Set Max Retries to 0 on a step that writes something the endpoint would count twice, so a blip never turns into a duplicate.
• Add an on-error path to be told when something fails, rather than finding out from this page.

Common problems

Retry Run is greyed out. There are unresolved external calls above it. Answer each one.

The retry failed at the same step. The cause was not transient. Fix the workflow, save, activate the new version, and retry again — the retry uses the version the run was pinned to, so a fix has to be activated to take effect on new runs.

I answered Went through and the run is still failed. That is the intended outcome: the call is not repeated, so the run stays failed. Handle the remainder by hand, or start a fresh run once the state is consistent.

The run has no retry panel. Only failed runs get one. A suspended run is still going.

Next step

Watch runs in Monitor, or Retries to reduce how often you end up here.