Flowchart as an Executable DSL
Spider-Flow models a crawler as a directed graph of nodes and edges: nodes are capabilities (request, extract, transform, persist) while edges carry data and control flow. The key benefit is making control structures explicit: pagination, branching, loops, and fallback handling are no longer hidden inside if/while blocks but become readable, reviewable, reusable graph structures. At runtime, the platform turns the graph into a schedulable job chain where each node focuses on input/output contracts, keeping large flows maintainable as they grow. With node-level logs and visual debugging, failures can be pinned to “which node + which rule + which input” instead of guesswork across massive logs.
