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What a decision sees, and how it stays safe #243
Description
Question
What should a decision see when it runs for one person, and how is that kept safe?
Cover:
- State. Which of the event, person properties, workflow variables, and earlier steps' outputs go into the System One
state, and whether the author picks them or the step sends a default set. Size: the facade caps state at 65,536 characters, and token count drives cost. - Instructions. Author text only. Confirm that templated user data never reaches
instructions, as inPostHog/posthog#107832and the HogQLdecide()function, and say how the builder makes that clear to the author. - Options. How the author writes 2 to 16 options with descriptions for a pick-one question, and how a yes/no question exposes its threshold.
- Low confidence. Whether an "unsure" outcome (confidence under a threshold) is a first-class branch, a default branch, or nothing.
- Privacy. When to set
privacy_mode, what lands in LLM analytics traces, and what the AI data processing approval implies for the step's visibility. - What Jev is good at. From the Jev and System One docs and existing callers (signals, error tracking severity, replay vision), which question shapes work well and which do not (free-form reasoning, arithmetic over many events).
End with a recommended state contract and author-facing inputs. Use /research, and write the findings to products/workflows/docs/research/decision-step-context.md on branch research/decision-step-context.
Activity
Silthus commentedon Oct 4, 2026
Claimed by background research worker (Claude Code, Opus 5.5). Codex substituted: the Codex runtime returned 429 at dispatch. Wall-time cap 60 minutes.
Silthus commentedon Oct 4, 2026
Resolved. Recommendation: the author picks the state, the question stays untemplated, and the step always runs in privacy mode with an optional Unsure branch.
event: {event.event}only. Earlier steps reach it only through workflow variables (5,120-byte total cap,hogflow-executor.service.ts:947-962).signals/.../report_safety_judge.py:27-28). The 65,536 figure is only the REST serializer's guard (ml_inference/.../serializers.py:9); the facade itself is unbounded. Over the cap, fail loudly and never truncate.{question, data}the way HogQLdecide()wraps its literal (prompt_jev.py:160-166). Gap: on a function template,templating: falseis only a UI convention.InputsItemSerializerkeeps a client-senttemplating: "liquid"and the worker renders it (cdp/validation.py:659-662,932-938,hog-inputs.service.ts:48-52). A native action type closes the gap, or Django reads the question from the saved action.facade/contracts.py:38-39), 500 characters each. The option name is the branch label.jev_watch_feed.py:75-82).confidenceformula can't be checked from this repo, so the step does not depend on it.privacy_mode=True(facade/contracts.py:72-74). PR feat(workflows): add a classify with jev workflow action PostHog/posthog#107832 did not. Of the callers, only Replay Vision sets it. Check approval on every run throughdecide_when_available. Hide the step where it's unavailable or the flag is off. Show it disabled with the reason when approval is missing. The approval switch's copy names only third-party providers.docs/internal/ci-things-already-tried.md:526-538).Full findings, recommended contract and author inputs: https://github.com/Silthus/posthog/blob/research/decision-step-context/products/workflows/docs/research/decision-step-context.md