What is a Robot Parameter?
A Robot Parameter configures the behavior of a Transloadit Robot, such as `width` for an image-resizing step. It differs from an Assembly flow parameter such as `use`, which determines where a step receives input.
How Robot Parameters work
Robot Parameters form the operation-specific part of an Assembly step’s instruction object. They select behaviors such as dimensions, formats, codecs, metadata handling, or destination settings, with available keys and value types defined by the chosen Robot. Flow keys instead describe graph behavior and input selection, so the two concerns are validated differently. Parameters are resolved when the Assembly runs and become part of the reproducible processing recipe recorded with the job.
A client authenticates and submits files or references together with workflow instructions. The platform validates the request, schedules dependent operations, records state transitions, and exposes results through a response, polling endpoint, or notification.
Platform concepts become reliable only when their lifecycle is explicit. Authentication, idempotency, retries, timeouts, observability, quotas, and terminal states should be designed together rather than added after failures occur.
Key facts
- 1Parameter names may recur across Robots without guaranteeing identical accepted values, defaults, or units; validation must use the documentation for the exact Robot.
- 2Omitting a parameter can invoke a Robot-defined default, which is observably different from sending an empty string, zero, false, or another explicit value.
- 3Template-backed Assemblies can centralize parameter sets, while request-time fields can supply controlled variations without duplicating the entire workflow graph.
When Robot Parameters matter
Set Robot Parameters to control the output of a specific processing step while keeping flow configuration separate. A valid parameter on one Robot may be unsupported or have different semantics on another.
- Running repeatable upload, import, processing, AI, storage, and notification pipelines.
- Tracking long-running media work independently from an application request.
- Applying credentials, quotas, retries, and error policies consistently across integrations.
Working with platform at scale
Guidance that holds across every platform term in this glossary, not just Robot Parameters.
What you gain
- Reusable workflows separate application intent from processing infrastructure.
- Stable job identifiers and lifecycle events improve observability and recovery.
- Managed queues and workers let products scale without embedding every media tool.
What it costs
- Synchronous responses are simple but keep connections open while long work executes.
- Aggressive retries improve recovery from transient faults but can duplicate work or overload a dependency.
- Higher concurrency reduces queue time until resource contention or a downstream limit becomes the bottleneck.
Answer these before production
- 1Define authentication, authorization, idempotency, retries, and terminal error behavior.
- 2Observe queue time, execution time, callbacks, and partial results with stable identifiers.
- 3Exercise malformed, duplicate, interrupted, and unauthorized requests before launch.
How Transloadit helps with Robot Parameters
When Robot Parameters are relevant to your workflow, you can hand the surrounding platform work to Transloadit instead of maintaining the processing stack yourself. Transloadit models file workflows as reusable Assembly Instructions. Upload, import, processing, AI, storage, delivery, status updates, and error handling can be composed without operating the underlying media tools yourself.
Support for a specific codec, container, parameter, or combination can vary by Robot and processing stack. Check the linked documentation for the exact inputs and outputs available for your use case.