Transloadit

What is an Assembly Step?

A Transloadit Assembly Step is one file-processing operation, such as encoding, resizing, or format conversion. Steps have chosen names and can supply their results to later Steps in the Instructions.

How Assembly Steps work

A Step is a named node in the Assembly’s processing graph, combining one Robot operation with a declared source of files. Its output can become a final deliverable, an intermediate representation, or input to several later nodes. Step names provide the graph’s internal addressing and also group results in status data. Designers compose small operations into branches so transformations and exports remain observable independently.

Key facts

  1. A Step may receive uploads directly or select results from one or more earlier Steps, which makes input references part of the workflow’s executable dependency graph.
  2. Two Steps can invoke the same Robot with different parameters, for example producing separate rendition sizes while preserving distinct names and result groups.
  3. Failure behavior is graph-sensitive: a downstream node cannot produce output when its required upstream branch yields no usable file, even if unrelated branches complete.

When Assembly Steps matter

Name Steps by purpose so dependencies and returned results remain understandable. Reference the correct upstream Step, because a mistaken name can process the wrong files or leave a branch without input.

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