A persistent and structurally revealing error pattern has emerged during my comparative testing of AI workflow platforms, specifically when examining the duplication mechanisms in Flux against other orchestration tools. The issue manifests as a 'Module not found' error immediately after duplicating a seemingly functional workflow within the same project environment. This is not a trivial path resolution failure; it suggests a deeper discrepancy in how dependency graphs or module resolution contexts are serialized and re-instantiated during the clone operation.
My standard test case involves a simple modular workflow with a local utility module. The original workflow executes flawlessly.
**Original Project Structure:**
```
my_flux_project/
├── workflows/
│ ├── original_workflow.py
│ └── utils/
│ └── helpers.py
└── flux.config.json
```
**original_workflow.py:**
```python
from utils.helpers import preprocess_data
def main(context):
data = context.get("input")
processed = preprocess_data(data)
return processed
```
Upon duplicating `original_workflow.py` to `duplicate_workflow.py` via Flux's UI 'Duplicate' function, the new file fails with `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'utils'`. The directory structure is preserved, and the Python interpreter is identical. This indicates the working directory or the `sys.path` injected at runtime for the duplicated workflow is incongruent with that of the original.
I have conducted a side-by-side analysis with two other platforms:
* In Platform A, duplication creates a fully independent workflow with an absolute import path derived from the project root, resulting in no errors.
* In Platform B, the duplication process copies the *entire* runtime configuration, including the virtual environment bindings, which also avoids this issue.
Flux's behavior implies it is copying the workflow's code definition but not its execution context's root path mapping. The critical questions for the community are:
* Is this a known design limitation in Flux's architecture, where workflows have an implicit "birth context" that is not part of the duplication schema?
* What is the prescribed method for creating a true, independent copy of a workflow with local module dependencies? Must one manually edit the import statements post-duplication to use absolute imports relative to the project root?
* Could this be a configuration issue in `flux.config.json`? My current configuration lacks any `PYTHONPATH` or `sys.path` modifications, relying on Flux's default runtime environment.
The error provides a valuable benchmark point for evaluating the robustness of workflow abstraction. A platform's duplication fidelity is a direct test of its internal representation of executable units.