Been building Slack automations for clients for a while now, and there's one mistake I see constantly - including in my own early work: naming every step "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3."

It seems harmless until 3 months later when:

• The client's team can't remember what a workflow actually does

• You get pulled back in for a "quick fix" because nobody else can read the workflow

• Handoff turns into a 45-minute screen share instead of a 2-minute doc read

The fix costs you zero extra time: name every step for what it does, not its position. "Collect client requirements" instead of "Step 1." "Route to eng-support" instead of "Step 3."

Two other cheap habits that save hours later:

1. Put a plain-English description in the workflow's description field - this is free real estate almost nobody uses, and it's the first thing a confused teammate reads.

2. Route every workflow's failures to one dedicated #automations-log channel instead of letting errors vanish into a busy channel. You'll catch breakage before the client does.

None of this requires new tools or budget - just discipline in how you build. If you're doing automation as a service (freelance or agency), this is the difference between "the person who built our Slack thing" and "our automation partner we've kept for two years."

Happy to go deeper on any of this if useful - drop a comment.