HotLoop Cascade

Cascade gets the plant talking to everything else. An alarm, a webhook, a schedule, a new row or an MQTT burst becomes a batch of items, and the items run through steps that call real systems with real credentials. If an API is down or the box reboots halfway through, the job still finishes, because every step is checkpointed and a retry is a row in the database, not a goroutine praying nobody pulls the plug.

It’s one static Go binary. SQLite on a Raspberry Pi, or Postgres with as many workers as you want on k3s. Postgres is the queue too, so there’s no Redis to babysit on a plant cluster.

What it won’t do

It won’t write to your equipment. Cascade reads and subscribes. Anything that moves a valve or changes a setpoint goes through HotLoop’s write gate, so the gate’s audit sees every write no matter which workflow started it. A workflow engine with a side door onto the PLC is how an audit trail stops being honest.

It won’t run JavaScript in your fields. Field expressions use expr, the same small language HotLoop’s automations use. It can’t touch the OS, the network or the filesystem, and it always terminates. JavaScript lives in exactly one place, the Code step, and that runs in a separate jailed process with no secrets, no network and no filesystem. Running JavaScript in every field is a remote code execution bug factory, and we’re not opening one.

It won’t gate anything. SSO, enforced MFA, RBAC, audit, version history, scoped API keys and HA workers are all in the one binary. There is no license check anywhere in the code.

It won’t phone home. No license server, no cloud dependency. Telemetry is opt-in, off by default, and documented down to the field when it lands.