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#28117fix(core): Avoid permanent deactivation on transient isolate errors

Transient isolate errors no longer deactivate workflows

IV
ivov
·Apr 8, 2026

Workflows that hit transient expression isolate failures will now retry automatically instead of being permanently deactivated.

When expression isolates encounter infrastructure problems, workflows used to be permanently deactivated. This meant a temporary network hiccup or isolated resource issue could disable an entire workflow until manually reactivated. A new IsolateError base class now classifies these as transient failures. During workflow activation, instead of deactivating the workflow, the system queues it for retry — and these retries don't count toward the exponential backoff timeout. Transient isolate problems will now resolve themselves automatically, with less manual intervention required. This change affects the expression runtime and workflow activation pipeline in the CLI package.

View Original GitHub DescriptionFact Check
Fact Check Notice: The commits mention "ci: Track insights summary endpoint in API coverage manifest" as one of the commits, which is an unrelated change to `n8n-api-coverage.json`. This change appears in the diff but isn't mentioned in the PR description. It's a minor peripheral change that should be noted.

Summary

Adds an IsolateError base class for expression isolate infrastructure errors. On workflow activation, these errors now queue the workflow for retry instead of permanently deactivating it, and do not increment the exponential backoff counter.

Related Linear tickets, Github issues, and Community forum posts

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  • PR title and summary are descriptive. (conventions) <!-- **Remember, the title automatically goes into the changelog. Use `(no-changelog)` otherwise.** -->
  • Docs updated or follow-up ticket created.
  • Tests included. <!-- A bug is not considered fixed, unless a test is added to prevent it from happening again. A feature is not complete without tests. -->
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