Things I learned while programming as a Petri-net maximalist.

WF-nets vs Pflow-workflows

Pflow’s workflow implementation simplifies and extends WF-net ideas for practical, real-world systems by:

  1. Adding retry and reentry mechanisms (allow_reentry).

  2. Restricting state behaviors to enforce runtime constraints.

  3. Focusing on execution rather than pre-runtime verification.

WF-nets remain a formal and abstract framework for analyzing workflows, often requiring specialized tooling and theoretical grounding. Pflow’s workflow model aligns more with runtime task automation and system engineering.