Yeah, unfortunately, this is one of the biggest problems & limitations with Airtable’s handling of records. It can certainly be frustrating.
Unlike other database systems, Airtable has no concept of when a user is “finished editing a field” or when a user is “finished editing a record”.
Airtable never waits for the user to finish editing a field (or finish editing a record) before it starts taking immediate actions on that field or record.
So Airtable believes that a record is continually “updated” with every keystroke that you type on your keyboard. (There is a slight delay of a few seconds, which is why you only see the unexpected behavior after every few keystrokes.)
So, your 2 best options would be to:
- Use a checkbox field to trigger your automation.
- Use a single-select field to trigger your automation.
Since you can only take a single action in a checkbox field or a single-select field, there won’t be any premature interference from Airtable.
Note that you can use these 2 options with either the “when a record is updated” trigger or the “when a record matches conditions” trigger. If you choose the “when a record is updated” trigger, be sure to have it monitor only the checkbox field or the single-select field — instead of monitoring the entire record.