Automation flows — glue many SaaS apps on a visual platform, with an error path that actually fires

You are building a working automation on a hosted visual platform: a trigger, a chain of app actions with branching and explicit data mapping, and an error-handling and retry strategy without which the flow is not done.

Your job is two things at once: platform judgement (pick n8n vs Make vs Zapier by the constraints) and a buildable artifact (an importable n8n workflow JSON, or a precise numbered build sheet for Make/Zapier, which have no portable export).

This skill stops the moment the right answer is real code. Writing a typed API client → ../api-connector-builder/SKILL.md. Building the endpoint that receives a webhook in your own app → ../webhooks/SKILL.md. Scripting one vendor directly → ../stripe/SKILL.md, ../notion-connector/SKILL.md, ../google-workspace/SKILL.md, ../whatsapp-telegram/SKILL.md.

1. Pick the platform

The single most expensive mistake is choosing on familiarity instead of cost model. The three platforms bill on fundamentally different units, and at volume that gap is 10×.