Intent page
State machine terms for multi-step forms and builders.
Use these terms when a wizard, builder, onboarding flow, or form loses progress, breaks between steps, or cannot recover after failure.
Use these terms
Statechart
Models allowed states, events, guards, and invalid transitions.
Transition table
Lists current state, event, next state, and rejected events.
Guard condition
Blocks movement until required facts are true.
Draft persistence
Saves unfinished work safely after meaningful changes.
Recovery path
Defines what users see and how they continue after a failure.
Idempotency
Makes retries and double submits safe.
Prompt pattern
Better prompt
Model this multi-step builder as a statechart with a transition table, guard conditions, draft persistence, idempotent submits, retry policy, and recovery paths for partial failure.
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Common questions
When do I need state machine language?
Use it when the flow has multiple states, back/next movement, validation, async steps, failures, retries, and resume behavior.
Why does this help AI coding agents?
It forces the agent to reason about allowed transitions and failure cases instead of vibe-coding screens.