Custom Workflow Blocks

Workflow blocks are reusable, composable units of automation – the building blocks from which pipelines are assembled without rewriting the same logic for every workflow.

In a hardware CI/CD pipeline, the same operations appear repeatedly: call the approved vendor list, check that required parameters are populated, notify a downstream system, validate a specific class of design data. Without workflow blocks, each workflow reimplements this logic independently. With blocks, the logic is defined once, tested once, and composed wherever it's needed.

A workflow block encapsulates a specific operation – its inputs, its outputs, and its behavior – and exposes it as a step that can be used in any workflow. The block owns the implementation. The workflow owns the sequence.

What Workflow Blocks Enable

• Reuse of validated logic – a block that implements a compliance check, an external system call, or a data transformation is tested in isolation and then reused across multiple workflows. When the underlying requirement changes – a new item added to the restricted parts list, a new parameter required by procurement – the block is updated once and the change propagates to every workflow that uses it.

• Separation of concerns – the engineer who understands the procurement system implements the AVL lookup block. The engineer who defines the release process composes it into a pipeline. Neither needs to understand the other's domain in detail. The block interface is the contract between them.

• Incremental pipeline construction – teams can start with simple, manual workflows and add complexity over time by introducing blocks for operations that are currently manual steps. Each block added to a workflow is one fewer thing that depends on someone remembering to do it.

• Standardization across teams – in organizations where multiple teams maintain their own design flows, shared workflow blocks enforce consistent behavior at the step level even when the overall pipeline structure differs between teams. The compliance check block, for example, runs identically whether it's embedded in a PCB release workflow or a library approval workflow.

Blocks vs Scripts

Scripts are self-contained operations invoked directly. Workflow blocks are composable units designed to be assembled into larger pipelines. A block often calls a script – the script implements the logic, the block provides the interface contract that makes it usable in a workflow context.

Use a script when you need a standalone operation. Wrap that script in a block when the operation needs to be reused as a step in multiple workflows, when it needs a stable interface that decouples implementation from usage, or when it needs to participate in the sequencing and gating logic of a pipeline.