Custom workflows

The publishing workflow is one shape, but a WorkflowConfig is just a state machine you describe yourself. When your process has different steps, roles, or rules — a legal review, dual sign-off, an embargo date — write your own and attach it to the collection's workflow. Everything the built-in gets (server-enforced transitions, expectedRevision concurrency, workflow history, lifecycle events) applies to a custom workflow unchanged.

The four building blocks

A WorkflowConfig is four fields:

states — every state a document can be in. Give exactly one published: true; that's the revision the public API serves. Everything else is internal.
transitions — the allowed moves. Each names a from and to state, the requiredCapabilities a user needs to perform it, and optionally requireComment: true. Mark the move that pulls content offline with unpublish: true.
roles — how your app's user.roles values map to capabilities. Capability names like entry.edit or entry.approve are just strings you invent and grant — the workflow only cares that a transition's requiredCapabilities are covered by the acting user's roles.
initialState — the state new documents start in.

The five recipes below are complete and copy-paste ready — each a real-world pattern that swaps in a different state machine. The surrounding collection and the way you drive it (see Performing a transition) never change.

Multi-stage approval

A compliance flow that inserts a legal-review step and a dedicated approver role between drafting and publishing:

import { defineCollection, defineTextField } from "@dyrected/core";
import type { WorkflowConfig } from "@dyrected/core";

const contractReview: WorkflowConfig = {
  initialState: "draft",
  states: [
    { name: "draft", label: "Draft", color: "neutral" },
    { name: "legal_review", label: "Legal review", color: "warning" },
    { name: "approved", label: "Approved", color: "info" },
    { name: "published", label: "Published", color: "success", published: true },
  ],
  transitions: [
    { name: "submit", label: "Send to legal", from: "draft", to: "legal_review", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.submit"] },
    { name: "approve", label: "Approve", from: "legal_review", to: "approved", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.approve"], requireComment: true },
    { name: "reject", label: "Send back", from: "legal_review", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.approve"], requireComment: true },
    { name: "publish", label: "Publish", from: "approved", to: "published", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "unpublish", label: "Unpublish", from: "published", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"], unpublish: true },
  ],
  roles: [
    { role: "author", capabilities: ["entry.edit", "entry.submit"] },
    { role: "counsel", capabilities: ["entry.approve"] },
    { role: "publisher", capabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
  ],
};

export const Contracts = defineCollection({
  slug: "contracts",
  workflow: contractReview,
  fields: [defineTextField({ name: "title", label: "Title", required: true })],
});

An author drafts and submits; only counsel can approve or send it back (and must leave a comment either way); only a publisher takes the approved document live. Each rule is enforced on the server — a request for a transition the user's roles don't cover is rejected with 403.

Two-key approval (maker–checker)

Regulated settings — banking, finance, anything with separation-of-duties rules — often need two different people to sign off on a change, the classic maker–checker control. Add a state between the two approvals so a single role can't do both. Here a document must be checked, then independently approved, before it can publish:

import type { WorkflowConfig } from "@dyrected/core";

const dualApproval: WorkflowConfig = {
  initialState: "draft",
  states: [
    { name: "draft", label: "Draft", color: "neutral" },
    { name: "checked", label: "First review", color: "warning" },
    { name: "approved", label: "Second review", color: "info" },
    { name: "published", label: "Published", color: "success", published: true },
  ],
  transitions: [
    { name: "check", label: "First sign-off", from: "draft", to: "checked", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.check"] },
    { name: "approve", label: "Second sign-off", from: "checked", to: "approved", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.approve"] },
    { name: "publish", label: "Publish", from: "approved", to: "published", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "unpublish", label: "Unpublish", from: "published", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"], unpublish: true },
  ],
  roles: [
    { role: "reviewer", capabilities: ["entry.check"] },
    { role: "approver", capabilities: ["entry.approve", "entry.publish"] },
  ],
};

Because check and approve require different capabilities held by different roles, no single person can push a document through both gates.

Scheduled or embargoed publishing

Keep a document in an approved state and let a background job move it to published when its embargo time arrives. The workflow itself just adds the holding state:

import type { WorkflowConfig } from "@dyrected/core";

const embargo: WorkflowConfig = {
  initialState: "draft",
  states: [
    { name: "draft", label: "Draft", color: "neutral" },
    { name: "scheduled", label: "Scheduled", color: "info" },
    { name: "published", label: "Published", color: "success", published: true },
  ],
  transitions: [
    { name: "schedule", label: "Schedule", from: "draft", to: "scheduled", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "publish", label: "Publish now", from: "scheduled", to: "published", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "unpublish", label: "Unpublish", from: "published", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"], unpublish: true },
  ],
  roles: [{ role: "editor", capabilities: ["entry.edit", "entry.publish"] }],
};

The "at the right time" part lives outside the workflow: a job compares each scheduled document's embargo field to the clock and calls the publish transition when it's due. Wire that up by reacting to workflow changes — see Lifecycle events.

Translation gating

For localized content, hold a document in a translation stage until every locale is ready, so a half-translated page never reaches the public:

import type { WorkflowConfig } from "@dyrected/core";

const localization: WorkflowConfig = {
  initialState: "draft",
  states: [
    { name: "draft", label: "Draft", color: "neutral" },
    { name: "translating", label: "Translating", color: "warning" },
    { name: "translated", label: "Translated", color: "info" },
    { name: "published", label: "Published", color: "success", published: true },
  ],
  transitions: [
    { name: "send", label: "Send to translation", from: "draft", to: "translating", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.submit"] },
    { name: "complete", label: "Mark translated", from: "translating", to: "translated", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.translate"] },
    { name: "publish", label: "Publish", from: "translated", to: "published", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "unpublish", label: "Unpublish", from: "published", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"], unpublish: true },
  ],
  roles: [
    { role: "writer", capabilities: ["entry.edit", "entry.submit"] },
    { role: "translator", capabilities: ["entry.translate"] },
    { role: "editor", capabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
  ],
};

Newsroom editorial pipeline

News and magazine desks route a story through specialists before it runs — a copy editor, then a fact checker, then an editor who publishes. Each hand-off is its own capability, and the fact checker can kick a story back to the writer:

import type { WorkflowConfig } from "@dyrected/core";

const newsroom: WorkflowConfig = {
  initialState: "draft",
  states: [
    { name: "draft", label: "Draft", color: "neutral" },
    { name: "copy_edit", label: "Copy edit", color: "warning" },
    { name: "fact_check", label: "Fact check", color: "warning" },
    { name: "ready", label: "Ready", color: "info" },
    { name: "published", label: "Published", color: "success", published: true },
  ],
  transitions: [
    { name: "submit", label: "Submit for editing", from: "draft", to: "copy_edit", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.submit"] },
    { name: "copyedited", label: "Copy edited", from: "copy_edit", to: "fact_check", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.copyedit"] },
    { name: "verified", label: "Facts verified", from: "fact_check", to: "ready", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.factcheck"] },
    { name: "kickback", label: "Return to writer", from: "fact_check", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.factcheck"], requireComment: true },
    { name: "publish", label: "Run it", from: "ready", to: "published", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
    { name: "unpublish", label: "Pull", from: "published", to: "draft", requiredCapabilities: ["entry.publish"], unpublish: true },
  ],
  roles: [
    { role: "reporter", capabilities: ["entry.edit", "entry.submit"] },
    { role: "copyeditor", capabilities: ["entry.copyedit"] },
    { role: "factchecker", capabilities: ["entry.factcheck"] },
    { role: "editor", capabilities: ["entry.publish"] },
  ],
};

Each desk only holds the capability for its own stage, so a story can't skip copy-editing or get published straight from a reporter's draft.

Tips for your own workflows

One published state. Exactly one state should carry published: true — it defines what the public API returns. States without it are internal and never leak.
Capabilities are your vocabulary. Invent whatever names fit (entry.approve, entry.translate), then grant them through roles. There's no fixed list to match.
Reachability. Make sure every state has a way in and a way out. A state no transition leads to (or out of) traps documents.
The server is the gate. Capability checks, requireComment, and expectedRevision are all enforced server-side, so you don't have to defend transitions in your UI — only present them.

For the complete list of every WorkflowConfig field, see the reference at the bottom of the Editorial workflows overview.