Unexpected behavior from unvisited nodes in a Switch-and-Merge workflow

[jan]

Welcome to the community @ari !

Yes, that is currently expected behavior. The Merge-Node needs always both inputs to execute to move forward and executes the second by itself, if it did not before. There was recently another discussion about it here:

removeKeyMatches Merge Node returns nothing if the comparison node is empty

This is something I also have a hard time with. It’s a consistent behavior of the Merge node. Both inputs must have data in order for the node to work at all. For me this requirement really limits my workflows as if any of the merge inputs is conditional I can’t be sure the workflow will work correctly and I am yet to find a convenient workaround. Also reading this old post from @jan it may not have always been like this:

Additionally also here a feature request regarding this behavior:

Merge node suggestion: add option to disable triggering of previous nodes

The idea is: The Merge node has a unique behavior in which it activates connected nodes independently (please also add an explanation in the documentation here: Merge | Docs). I think it’s something that should be configurable in the node. My use case: I had multiple cases in which the Merge node triggered nodes that were not supposed to be triggered (usually in an unused path of an IF node). I think it would be beneficial to add this because: It gives more control of the Merge node, in …