Skip to content

validate_workflow doesn't flag dangling sourceNodeId pins after node delete-and-recreate — silent wiring breakage #21

Description

@TenSpy-ai

Summary

Delete-and-recreate is the only way to fully reset a node's inputSchema (since edit_node merges and cannot remove properties/required entries). But recreation mints a new node id, while downstream nodes keep their sourceNodeId pins referencing the old, deleted id — and validate_workflow passes without flagging the dangling reference. Wiring breaks silently: runs fail on missing inputs, or agent nodes quietly guess values.

Reproduction (verified 2026-08-06)

  1. Workflow with node X → downstream node Y pinned to X (sourceNodeId: <X id>).
  2. Delete X, recreate it identically (new id).
  3. validate_workflow → passes.
  4. Run → Y's pinned input resolves nothing (old id no longer exists).

Expected

validate_workflow should flag any sourceNodeId/sourcePath referencing a node id that doesn't exist in the graph — this is statically detectable and would turn a silent run-time failure into an immediate, actionable validation error.

Built/observed via the Clay plugin's workflow MCP (edit_node) + CLI on Claude Code.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions