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Workflows vs. direct commands

landbase-cli has two ways to process data: direct commands and workflow commands. They serve different purposes and are not interchangeable.

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Direct commands

Direct commands (enrich, match, contact-enrich) operate on one record or a small batch and return results immediately or after a short async wait.
Use direct commands when:
  • You have one record or a handful of records
  • You need results right now (synchronous or short async)
  • You do not need the results saved as a dataset in your Landbase workspace
  • You are piping output to another command

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Workflow commands

Workflow commands (workflow match, workflow enrich, workflow publish, etc.) operate on an existing Landbase dataset — a file you have already uploaded, or a dataset created by a previous search or workflow.
Use workflow commands when:
  • You have a dataset of many records (hundreds or thousands of rows)
  • You want the results saved back into your Landbase workspace
  • You want dataset lineage — a traceable chain of input → processed → output
  • You need to run multiple processing steps in sequence (onboard → match → enrich → publish)

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The key difference: dataset lineage

Workflow commands produce child datasets. Every time you run a workflow on a dataset, Landbase creates a new dataset linked to the original. This lets you:
  • Trace the provenance of any dataset (what was it created from?)
  • Re-run a step without re-uploading
  • Download any intermediate result
Direct commands do not create datasets. Their output is returned to your terminal (stdout) and is not stored in your workspace.

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Side by side

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When to use which

Use direct commands for ad hoc lookups during research, or when piping output to another command. Use workflow commands when you have uploaded data and want to process it in Landbase, track the results, and download them in a structured format. Many pipelines combine both: a direct match to verify a single candidate, then workflow enrich to enrich a full uploaded dataset.