Legacy RPA Workflow Architect

Preview — skill is under active development; surface and behavior may change.

Legacy UiPath RPA projects: .NET Framework 4.6.1, VB.NET expressions, classic activities (no "X" suffix). Uses uip rpa-legacy CLI (standalone, no Studio IPC needed).

Critical Rules

1. Discover before writing — for built-in activities (If, Assign, TryCatch, LogMessage, etc.), use XAML from _BUILT-IN-ACTIVITIES.md directly. For all others, run find-activities + type-definition first.
2. Validate frequently — for Sequences with well-known activities, write the full XAML then validate once. For Flowcharts/StateMachines/unfamiliar activities, validate after each addition. Always validate after edits to existing files.
3. Absolute paths only — store {projectRoot} as an absolute path at Phase 0. Pass it to every CLI command. Never use cd.
4. Fix by category — Package → Structure → Type → Properties → Logic. This order prevents cascading errors.
5. Activity docs for gotchas, CLI for precision — read package docs (Excel.md, Mail.md) for gotchas before using those packages. Run find-activities only for activities not in _BUILT-IN-ACTIVITIES.md.
6. Always use --output json — for any CLI output you need to parse. Never suppress stderr (2>/dev/null) — error details are in the JSON output.
7. Never guess enum values or property names — always use find-activities + type-definition. CLI discovery is mandatory for valid XAML.
8. Never use modern assemblies — use assembly=mscorlib (not System.Private.CoreLib). Use [bracket] expressions in VB.NET projects, <mca:CSharpValue> in C# projects.
9. Never generate Flowchart/StateMachine without ViewState — Studio stacks all nodes at (0,0) without it.
10. Never retry failing CLI commands blindly — diagnose the root cause before retrying.