Anatomy of a flow
A flow is a trigger plus a sequence of steps. The trigger decides when a run starts; the steps do the work, in order. Together they form the flow.
The canvas: where you build and run
Section titled “The canvas: where you build and run”The canvas is the single surface where you both design a flow and watch it run. There is no separate “editor” and “viewer” — opening a flow always lands you on the canvas.
Build mode
Section titled “Build mode”In build mode you:
- Add, connect, and configure steps from the palette.
- Use the zoom controls (or scroll to zoom, drag to pan) to navigate; press Tidy to auto-arrange nodes top-to-bottom when the layout gets cluttered.
- Press Run to start the flow by hand at any time — even if the flow has a cron or webhook trigger.
Review mode
Section titled “Review mode”When you open a past run, the canvas switches to review mode (a banner signals the switch). In review mode:
- Every node shows a status pip — completed, failed, waiting — from that specific run.
- Editing is off: you can’t drag nodes, add steps, or draw connections while inspecting a run.
- Panning and zooming still work, so you can read a large flow.
- An Exit view button returns you to build mode.
What a trigger is
Section titled “What a trigger is”Every flow has exactly one trigger. It decides how a run starts:
| Trigger | When a run starts |
|---|---|
| Manual | Someone presses Run |
| Schedule (Cron) | A cron expression fires on a time pattern |
| Webhook | An external system POSTs to the flow’s URL |
| Event | Something inside Routario happens (a record is created, a document arrives) |
A flow with a cron, webhook, or event trigger can also be run by hand at any time — see Running & debugging a flow.
What steps are
Section titled “What steps are”Steps are the nodes on the canvas. They run in order and can do work, make decisions, loop over lists, pause for a person, wait for time to pass, or send a message — see the reference catalog for the full list, and Routing for the control-flow nodes.
Every step can read the outputs of earlier steps with {{ label.field }}
references, plus a few always-available namespaces — see
Template variables.
How flows connect to each other
Section titled “How flows connect to each other”A flow can call another flow. A Run flow step invokes a target flow as a sub-routine: the child runs and its outputs become available in the parent under the step’s label. This is the reuse primitive — if a sequence is shared by several flows, pull it into its own flow and call it.
A flow can start from a platform event. An Event trigger fires when Routario dispatches a named internal event; the event’s payload keys are injected into the run context.
About agents: flows can call agents (a step hands work to an agent), but an agent does not itself start a named flow — there’s no “agent-initiated” trigger kind today. A flow that should be kicked off by an agent uses a webhook or an event the agent emits.
Leaving notes for other people
Section titled “Leaving notes for other people”Long flows get hard to read at a glance — someone opening a flow they didn’t build has no way to tell what a step is for without digging into its configuration. A note is a short comment pinned to one step, visible to anyone who opens the flow.
- Hover a step and a small note icon fades in at its bottom-right corner. Click it to open a text box and type your note. It saves when you click Save, press Esc, or click elsewhere — there’s no separate step required. Clear removes the note.
- Once a step has a note, the icon turns solid and stays visible without hovering, so scanning a long flow shows you at a glance which steps have context attached.
- Hovering a solid note icon shows the note’s text right in the tooltip — you don’t need to click in just to read it.
- Opening a step’s detail panel also shows its note, read-only, near the top. The canvas icon is the only place you can edit it.
Notes are for whoever is building or maintaining the flow. The on-canvas icon disappears while you’re reviewing a past run (review mode is read-only), but a note’s text still shows, read-only, if you open that step’s detail panel.