Micro-Apps as Workflow Scalpel: Automating the Unfixable

Most engineering orgs have systems you can't touch—legacy tools, rigid workflows, inflexible platforms. You know they're inefficient. But you're not going to get buy-in for a full rewrite, and you're not authorized to change the requirements.

So what do you do? You optimize the fragment.

That’s where micro-apps come in—not as platforms, not as products, but as scalpels for automating repetitive, constrained workflows when everything else is locked down.

A Common Case: “Send This Report Every Week”

You’re told to send a status email every Friday at 4PM. It needs three metrics pulled from a dashboard, one from a database, and a copy-pasted summary from last week.

You can’t change the requirement. You can’t change the dashboard. You can’t change the process.

But you can write a 50-line script that grabs the metrics, formats the body, and fires off the email.

You’ve just reclaimed 30 minutes per week—and eliminated the human error from a repetitive task.

That’s the point of micro-apps. They optimize the edge cases when the system is unfixable.

Workflow Fragmentation Is the Norm

You don’t work in a clean pipeline. You work in a mess:

Jira tickets that trigger manual emails
Dashboards you export just to reformat in Excel
CI failures that need copy-pasted logs to Slack
Environments with no API, just a browser UI and guesswork

You can’t refactor these systems. But you can wrap the friction points with micro-apps.

Not big systems. Not platforms. Not products.

Just sharp tools for well-scoped problems.

Micro-App Philosophy

If you’re building micro-apps, follow these principles:

Single responsibility: One input, one output, one job.
Zero config: If it needs onboarding, it's too big.
Fast to use: Ideally <1s interaction time.
Local-first: Run it from your machine, or a single server. No infra complexity unless necessary.
Throwaway-friendly: Build fast. Be ready to delete fast.

A good micro-app saves time on day one. A great one can be rebuilt in an afternoon if it disappears.

Don't Abuse Them

Micro-apps are not a substitute for strategic platform work. If you:

Have 7 tools doing the same thing
Built a micro-app that every team now depends on
Keep extending the same script until it’s a full stack app

…you've gone too far.

Use micro-apps to patch workflows, not design them. They’re drop-in fixes, not foundations.

They should automate what exists, not entrench what's broken.

A Healthy Micro-App Culture

Want your org to benefit from this pattern? Set some cultural defaults:

Let engineers ship small tools with minimal process.
Provide one-click hosting (e.g. GitHub Pages, Netlify, internal runners).
Maintain a simple internal app catalog with short-lived entries.
Celebrate small wins: highlight tools that eliminate 5–10 minutes of weekly toil.

This isn’t about building internal platforms. It’s about removing local friction without red tape.

Closing Thoughts

Micro-apps are for the 20% of workflows where the system won’t change, but your time is still being wasted.

They are surgical, ephemeral, and high-leverage—not scalable solutions, but highly effective responses to immovable constraints.

So next time you’re forced to do something dumb, manually, again:
Don’t file a ticket.
Don’t ask permission.
Build a tool. Use it. Delete it later.

Small tools. Big leverage. No excuses.

Torben Haack