windmill/docs/fork-triggers.md

Triggers and schedules in workspace forks

A workspace fork is a developer-controlled copy of a parent workspace, used to test changes before merging back via git sync. Triggers and schedules in a fork need special handling for two reasons:

1. Listener take-over: most trigger kinds (Kafka, Postgres, MQTT, NATS, SQS, GCP, Azure) attach to a stateful upstream resource. Two listeners sharing the same identifier compete for events.
2. Merge round-trip: every change made in a fork can flow back to the parent through git sync. If the fork sets a trigger to disabled, that value would otherwise overwrite the parent's enabled state on merge.

Cloning model — always cloned, always disabled

Fork creation always runs clone_triggers_and_schedules. Every row in each *_trigger table and in schedule is copied from the parent into the fork with two invariants:

• Always disabled. The clone forces mode='disabled'::TRIGGER_MODE on triggers and enabled=false on schedules, regardless of the parent's state. Disabled rows have no side effects — no listener attaches to the upstream, no cron fires — so this clone is safe by construction. The user re-enables manually in the fork.
• Listener identifiers copied verbatim. Stored values for group_id, replication_slot_name, subscription_name, client_id, consumer_name, etc. are copied 1:1. Until the runtime-suffix work ships (see below), enabling a cloned listener in the fork would compete with the parent — the conflict warning below catches that case.

native_trigger (Nextcloud, Google Drive, GitHub) is intentionally not cloned. Those triggers manage external webhook state we don't want duplicated.

Non-workspaced HTTP triggers are also skipped. A row with workspaced_route=false (and where neither CLOUD_HOSTED nor the HTTP_ROUTE_WORKSPACED_ROUTE instance setting is on) has a runtime URL without any workspace prefix. A clone would collide with the parent's row at the matchit router level, where duplicate inserts are silently dropped — one trigger would invisibly hijack the other. There is no namespacing escape hatch for these (the whole point of workspaced_route=false is to skip the prefix), so the clone filter excludes them. The fork user can re-create one manually if they need it. When CLOUD_HOSTED or HTTP_ROUTE_WORKSPACED_ROUTE is on, every route is workspace-prefixed at runtime regardless of the column, and the clone copies all rows.

Non-workspaced email triggers are skipped on the same grounds. A row with workspaced_local_part=false exposes a bare local_part@domain address shared instance-wide; a clone would share the address with the parent and incoming mail would be delivered arbitrarily. The clone filter copies email triggers only when workspaced_local_part IS TRUE (or CLOUD_HOSTED, since cloud scopes email lookup by workspace_id natively).

Merge-direction filter (always on)

Whenever the source workspace has parent_workspace_id IS NOT NULL (i.e. it's a fork), the tarball export at /api/w/{workspace}/workspaces/tarball strips fork-local fields:

• mode from every *_trigger row
• enabled from every schedule row

The fork-detection key is the column, not the wm-fork-* naming convention, so it stays consistent with the conflict-warning gates in set_trigger_mode and set_schedule_enabled and survives any future ID rename.

The trigger update handler complements this: when an incoming update_trigger request omits both mode and enabled, the existing DB value is preserved instead of falling back to the BaseTriggerData default of Enabled. This means the fork→parent merge cannot flip the parent's operational state, even if the fork has an explicit (locally-disabled) state for that path.

The schedule EditSchedule payload already lacks an enabled field, so its update path is naturally safe.

Conflict warning on enable

The set_*_trigger_mode endpoint fires the warning whenever a fork transitions to a mode that attaches a listener — Enabled or Suspended. Suspended is not "off": the listener still attaches and consumes events; only the auto-run of queued jobs is paused. Two suspended forks would still split Kafka events or share a Postgres slot with the parent. Disabled is the only mode that fully detaches.

The check fires whenever the parent workspace has a row at the same trigger path — regardless of the parent's current mode/enabled. If so, the endpoint rejects the request with an error string of the shape:

fork-conflict:<kind>:<parent_workspace_id>

The frontend's withForkConflictRetry helper detects this prefix, asks the user to confirm via a dialog (a ConfirmationModal mounted at the logged layout root, driven by the forkConflictModal store), and re-issues the call with force: true if the user agrees. The CLI sees the raw error.

The check fires whenever the parent has the row because the fork's row was cloned from the parent — the upstream identifier (Kafka group, PG slot, SQS queue URL, GCP/Azure subscription, …) is shared by construction. That sharing is a risk independent of the parent's current state:

• Both enabled → the listeners compete (split events) or fire twice.
• Parent disabled → the fork can destructively claim shared state (PG WAL advance, Azure secret_hash reuse, MQTT client_id race) before the parent re-enables.

The check is opt-out per kind via TriggerCrud::FORK_CONFLICT_ON_ENABLE (default true). It is skipped for kinds whose upstream identifier is already workspace-scoped at runtime — fork and parent there can never share a real upstream:

• HTTP — routes are /r/<workspace_id>/...; cloned rows always have workspaced_route=true (non-workspaced are filtered out at clone time).
• Email — addresses are workspace-prefixed; cloned rows always have workspaced_local_part=true.

The check fires for every other kind. The frontend modal copy splits the conflict into three families so the user can act on the right risk:

• Split events (Kafka, NATS, MQTT, SQS, GCP, Azure) — events split between the two listeners; each side receives a fraction of its traffic.
• Duplicate firing (Websocket, Schedule) — every event fires the script twice (once in fork, once in parent).
• Slot takeover (Postgres) — the replication slot is exclusive and destructive: enabling either errors with "slot already active" (parent enabled) or hijacks the WAL position (parent disabled).

This warning is the durable solution for trigger kinds where the conflict cannot be eliminated by namespacing alone:

• SQS — the queue is the event source; two consumers will compete for messages no matter what.
• GCP-Existing subscription — same as SQS.
• Schedule — same wall-clock firing.

For the kinds that can be auto-namespaced (see below), the warning is the short-term placeholder until that work lands.

Merge UI behavior

The merge UI (CompareWorkspaces.svelte) lists triggers and schedules side-by-side from both workspaces, computes a per-row change check that ignores runtime fields (mode, enabled, server_id, last_server_ping, edited_at/edited_by, extra_perms, permissioned_as), and only shows rows that differ in actual config. A fresh clone (only mode differs) is filtered out.

Triggers and schedules are never auto-selected in the default deploy / update selection — only diff items (scripts/flows/apps/etc.) are. The user opts in by clicking individual trigger rows. This keeps a routine Deploy to parent flow from accidentally pushing trigger config the fork hasn't intentionally changed.

Future work — runtime listener suffix

A follow-up PR will append a fork-specific suffix to the upstream identifier at runtime for the kinds that support it:

Kind	Identifier	Notes
Kafka	group_id	Two consumer groups never share messages.
MQTT	client_id	Brokers reject duplicate client_ids; suffix avoids that.
NATS	durable consumer name	Fork consumes independently.
Postgres	replication_slot_name + publication_name	Fork auto-creates its own publication on enable, drops on disable / fork delete.
Azure Event Grid	subscription_name	manage_azure_subscription creates the suffixed sub in Azure.
GCP Pub/Sub (CreateNew)	subscription_id	manage_google_subscription creates the suffixed sub.

The suffix is applied at runtime by the listener — the stored identifier column never carries the suffix, so nothing extra needs to be filtered on export. The follow-up also adds cleanup-on-fork-delete hooks for the upstream resources (Azure / GCP / Postgres publication) so deleted forks don't leak external state.