Workflow: allow simple inline functions in variable fields (coalesce/ifnull/lower/trim/concat…)

[ClaireGz]

Summary

Workflow variable inputs only accept a bare {{ref}}. Any transformation — a fallback, lowercasing, trimming, concatenation — requires creating a whole CODE (serverless logic function) step. A small set of safe inline expressions would remove most of them.

Motivating example

In one person-enrichment workflow, 9 of 10 CODE steps exist only to do trivial transforms:

• coalesce() / first-non-empty — pick a company name from a linked company else a text field; pick a title from 4 candidate fields; domain fallback (3 steps)
• string ops (lower(), trim(), strip a URL down to its host) — inline within the above

Proposal

Support a small, safe expression/function set inside {{ }} variable fields, e.g.:

{{ coalesce(a, b, c) }}
{{ ifnull(a, b) }}
{{ lower(x) }}
{{ trim(x) }}
{{ concat(a, b) }}
{{ default(x, "fallback") }}

Benefit

Eliminates the majority of CODE steps — each of which is a serverless function to author, deploy and maintain, and adds latency — and keeps simple transforms visible inline instead of hidden inside code.