Tune Deployed Flows

After deploying flows to production, you may need to adjust retry behavior, timeouts, or delays based on real-world performance. This guide shows how to tune these runtime configuration options without recompiling or redeploying.

For structural changes like adding steps or changing dependencies, create a new flow version instead (see Version Your Flows).

Configuration Reference

For complete documentation of all available options, defaults, and examples, see the Configuration Reference.

What Can Be Updated

You can safely modify these runtime options for existing flows without creating a new version:

DSL Option	Database Column	Default	Reference
maxAttempts	opt_max_attempts	3	maxAttempts
baseDelay	opt_base_delay	1	baseDelay
timeout	opt_timeout	60	timeout
startDelay	opt_start_delay	0	startDelay

pgflow uses a two-level configuration approach where flow-level options set defaults and step-level options override them. Note that startDelay is step-level only.

Updating Options Manually

Since the compiler doesn’t support updating existing flows, you must manually update options in the database:

Flow Level (Affects All Steps)

UPDATE pgflow.flows
SET opt_max_attempts = 5, opt_timeout = 10, opt_base_delay = 2
WHERE flow_slug = 'your_flow_slug';

Step Level (Overrides Flow Defaults)

UPDATE pgflow.steps
SET opt_max_attempts = 3, opt_timeout = 30, opt_start_delay = 5
WHERE flow_slug = 'your_flow_slug' AND step_slug = 'your_step_slug';

Example: Increasing Retries for API Calls

A common scenario is adjusting retry behavior after observing production issues:

-- Check current settings
SELECT step_slug, opt_max_attempts, opt_timeout
FROM pgflow.steps
WHERE flow_slug = 'analyze_website';

-- Update API call step to retry more
UPDATE pgflow.steps
SET opt_max_attempts = 5, opt_timeout = 120
WHERE flow_slug = 'analyze_website' AND step_slug = 'website';

Caution

After updating options in the database, remember to update your flow definition code to keep them in sync. Otherwise, the next time you recompile and deploy migrations, your manual changes will be overwritten.

Learn More

Configuration Reference Complete documentation of all configuration options, defaults, and behavior

Version Your Flows When to create a new version instead of tuning config