Shepherd Advanced Notes

Sep 24, 2026 · Backend Development

Building a Lightweight Approval Flow with AI: Why Flowable Wasn't the Right Fit

The author details building a lightweight approval flow end-to-end using AI (Codex), covering process modeling, dynamic forms, conditional and parallel branches, task routing, path replay, and analytics, while explaining why Flowable was rejected due to excessive tables, steep learning curve, integration difficulty, and the need for a lightweight, configurable solution.