Connecting the dots between different services is the backbone of modern software. Whether you're syncing customer data to a CRM, processing payments, or sending notifications, you're relying on API integrations. But as anyone who's managed these knows, traditional point-to-point integrations and fragile webhook listeners can quickly become a mess of "spaghetti code"—difficult to maintain, impossible to scale, and brittle in the face of failure.
What if we could treat each integration point not as a custom, one-off script, but as a standardized, reusable building block?
This is the core philosophy behind Actions.do: encapsulating every piece of business logic, from simple API calls to complex data transformations, into a composable Action. It's a move from fragile scripts to a resilient, "Actions as Code" framework that makes building and maintaining integrations a breeze.
If you've ever built a workflow that touches multiple third-party services, you've likely encountered these pain points:
Instead of building monolithic scripts, the Actions.do approach is to deconstruct a workflow into its smallest, indivisible units of work. We call these Actions.
An Action is a self-contained, executable piece of code that performs one specific task. Think of it as a serverless function with superpowers, designed for reusability and resilience.
Let's look at a simple example. Here's how you'd define a reusable Action to notify a Slack channel using Actions.do:
import { Action } from 'actions.do';
// Define a reusable action to notify a Slack channel
const notifySlack = new Action({
id: 'notify-slack-channel',
handler: async (payload: { channel: string; message: string }) => {
const { channel, message } = payload;
console.log(`Sending to Slack #${channel}: ${message}`);
// The robust logic for authenticating and calling the
// real Slack API would go here.
// const slackResponse = await postToSlack(channel, message);
// This Action can define its own success/failure criteria.
return { success: true, timestamp: new Date().toISOString() };
}
});
// This Action can now be executed by any workflow or direct API call.
This notify-slack-channel Action is now a fundamental building block in your organization's toolkit. It's versioned, testable, and can be invoked by any other service or workflow without needing to know the implementation details of the Slack API.
Let's apply this concept to a common workflow: onboarding a new paid user.
The Old Way: A single, long /onboard-user endpoint that makes three sequential API calls. If the second call to your marketing tool fails, the user might not get their welcome email, and the entire process halts in an inconsistent state.
The Actions.do Way: We define a series of small, independent Actions.
Now, instead of a fragile script, you have a robust orchestration. With Actions.do, you can chain these Actions together. The output of create-stripe-customer can be used as an input for the next step. Most importantly, each Action manages its own lifecycle.
This action-oriented approach directly solves the problems of traditional integrations:
The future of automation isn't about writing more integration code; it's about writing smarter code. By treating every business task as a simple, powerful Action, you create a library of building blocks that can be composed into any workflow imaginable. This is the foundation for building resilient, scalable, and truly automated systems.
Ready to stop gluing services together and start building robust workflows? Explore Actions.do and define your first Action today.