Anti-patterns

Common LoT mistakes

These are the most frequent mistakes in LoT development. Avoid them whether you’re writing new code or reviewing existing output.

Anti-Pattern	Why It’s Bad	Do This Instead
Omitting type casts in math	Implicit type handling leads to silent errors	Always cast: `PAYLOAD AS DOUBLE`, `GET TOPIC ... AS DOUBLE` — see Operations
Triggering models on timestamps	Timestamps update every tick — model fires constantly	Trigger on the primary data field: `AS TRIGGER` on value, not timestamp — see Schema definition
Inconsistent naming across models	`sensorID` in one model, `sensor_id` in another	Standardize on `snake_case` for all field names — see Naming conventions
Using Python for native LoT tasks	Python adds overhead for simple publish/get/if operations	Use Python only for math libraries, ML, API calls, or complex parsing
Leaving `$SYS/#` topics unrestricted	System topics contain broker commands and sensitive data	Create a priority-10 Rule restricting `PublishSys` and `SubscribeSys` — see Rules syntax
Generic entity names	`Action1`, `Rule1`, `MyRoute` are meaningless in a system with 50 entities	Name by purpose: `MonitorPressure`, `ProtectSysTopics`, `SensorDatabase`
`PUBLISH` for internal state	Broadcasts data that only your own Actions need	Use `KEEP TOPIC` for internal state; `PUBLISH` for external subscribers — see Writing reusable logic
Monolithic Actions	One Action doing 15 things is hard to test and debug	Split into callable Actions with `INPUT`/`OUTPUT` — see One Action, One Job