Automations vs workflows vs templates vs recipes vs apps vs blueprints - how best to extend and build upon primitives

[jacobsmith928]

We expect that users (and agents) will need to customize their infrastructure, tap into partner solutions, and move from simple to robust. We envision a catalog of automations, some of which are maintained by Datum, some by the community / partners, and others configured by users for their own organizations.

On the infrastructure side, a good example of this is Railway's template system. On the more consumer side, Zapier's "Zaps" concept (Zapier A;pps?) is a widely used and compelling example.

Below is a proposal from @scotwells for how to think about this on the backend "milo" side. We need to consider this, but also how to expose it and brand it for users of Datum Cloud.

Summary

• A template system Milo to define, share, and manage reusable blueprints for resources (proxies, secrets, export policies, workflows, etc). A template describes a consistent package — such as an environment, product, or tenant — that can be parameterized, versioned, and distributed through a catalog.
• The system simplifies delivery, ensures consistency, and provides governance across the full lifecycle of template creation, testing, release, and upgrades.

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Suggested Features

• Template Definition
  • Schema / DSL for resources, workflows, parameters, and conditions
  • Composition, inheritance, and conditional logic
  • Hooks for pre/post instantiation and migration actions
• Authoring & Development
  • CLI / SDK for authoring, validation, linting, and dry-run previews
  • Local simulator and testing framework
  • Git integration for version-controlled development
• Catalog & Distribution
  • Official and community-supported template catalogs
  • Metadata: name, description, tags, version, owner, and preview
  • Search, discovery, and access control (global, org, project)
  • Import / export and sharing across environments
• Versioning & Lifecycle
  • Semantic versioning (major / minor / patch)
  • Deprecation and retirement of older versions
  • Upgrade and migration paths with roll forward / rollback
  • Canary / phased rollout and staged environments (dev, test, prod)
• Instance Management
  • Provenance tracking: template version, parameters, owner
  • Lifecycle operations: update, patch, delete / teardown
  • Drift detection and reconciliation against template definitions
• Governance & Policy
  • Guardrails and policy enforcement at definition and instantiation
  • Governance workflows for review and approval
  • Audit trails of edits, publishes, and instantiations
  • Certification and quality badges for trusted templates
• Observability & Operations
  • Metrics, logs, and dashboards for template usage and health
  • Alerts for failed instantiations, drift events, and upgrade issues
  • Support for scaling catalogs and concurrent instantiations
  • Dependency graph resolution and parallel provisioning