Glossary · Reliability
Dry run
Also called: test run, simulation, sandbox run
A dry run executes a workflow end to end with its side effects simulated, so you can see what every step would do without sending, writing or charging anything.
The term comes from rehearsals and fire drills: go through every motion without the real consequences. In automation, a dry run walks the graph with real sample data, evaluates every condition and mapping, and stops short of the calls that change the world: the email isn't sent, the CRM isn't updated, the AI provider isn't billed.
What a dry run catches
- Field mappings that point at the wrong path (
input.json.emailvsinput.email) - Router conditions that send everything down the default route
- Templates that render
undefinedinto a customer-facing message - Branches you forgot to connect
What it can't catch
A dry run simulates the outside world, so it can't tell you that the CRM will reject a field, that the API token lacks a permission, or what a real model will say. Treat it as the first gate, then do one supervised live run with a harmless input, and watch the trace.
A sensible order
- Dry run with a real sample (a recent actual payload, not a made-up one).
- Dry run the unhappy paths: missing fields, the approval rejected, the timeout.
- One live run with a test record.
- Turn the trigger on, and look at the first few traces.
In Fluxo Flow
Dry Run runs in your browser: app calls, side effects and AI steps are simulated, so no key is used and nothing is sent. When it reaches a Human Review step, you choose the decision to simulate (approved, rejected or timeout) and test every branch. The trace shows each step's input and output. The Free plan is built around it: you can build up to the plan's draft-workflow limit and Dry Run them, and running live needs a paid plan.
Read next
Related terms
- Human in the loop (HITL)Human in the loop (HITL) is a design in which an automated process pauses at chosen points for a person to review, correct, approve or reject its output before it continues.
- Structured outputStructured output is a model response in a predefined, machine-readable format, typically a JSON object matching a schema, so the next steps of a workflow can use the fields directly instead of parsing prose.
- ActionAn action is a workflow step that does something outside the workflow, such as creating a CRM record, sending an email, posting to Slack or calling an API.
- WorkflowA workflow is a repeatable sequence of steps, started by a trigger, that turns an input (a form, an invoice, a new deal) into an outcome, with defined rules for each decision along the way.
- Exponential backoffExponential backoff is a retry strategy in which the wait before each new attempt grows exponentially (for example 1, 2, 4, 8 seconds), usually with random jitter, up to a maximum number of attempts or delay.
- Dead-letter queueA dead-letter queue is a holding place for messages or items that couldn't be processed after all retries, kept aside with their error so a person can inspect, fix and replay them instead of losing them.