How-to guides
Building workflows
Saved sequences of work, ready when you need them.
A workflow is a sequence of steps you save once and run whenever you need it. Steps run top to bottom, each one is verified before the next begins, and every run keeps a receipt of what actually happened.
Open Chat and choose the Workflows tab.
What a step can be
This is the first thing to know, because it sets expectations honestly. The workflow builder offers a deliberately small set of actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| List folder | List the contents of an exact folder on this Mac. |
| Web research | Run one public web search and return the sources. |
| Create document | Build a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF file. |
| Check OOMU status | Report the runtime's own state. |
A workflow can have up to 16 steps.
If you are looking for a workflow step that sends mail, calls a connected service, or drives an application, it is not in the builder in this beta. Those capabilities exist and are available to OOMU in chat; they are not yet exposed as authored workflow steps. The rest of the machinery (validation, verified execution, receipts, recovery, scheduling) is built out well beyond that step list, which is why this page describes it in full.
Building one
Choose New workflow and give it a name, an optional description, and an optional project.
Then add steps. For each, choose the Action and fill in what it needs. Fields are specific to the action:
| Field | Appears for |
|---|---|
| Folder path on this Mac: with Choose folder… | List folder |
| Maximum items | List folder |
| Search, Maximum results | Web research |
| Title, File name, Format, Content, Language | Create document |
Use Move step up and Move step down to reorder, and Remove step to delete.
"Choose clear actions. OOMU validates every step before saving." Validation is real. A step whose arguments do not satisfy its schema does not save.
Test a step before you commit
Each step has Test step. It runs that step alone and shows you the Input it used, the Verified output it produced, and how long it took in milliseconds.
Do this. A workflow whose steps you have each watched work is a different thing from one you hoped would work.
Running one
Run now starts the workflow. The run view shows real progress, step by step, with each step in one of seven states:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Waiting | Not started. |
| Reserved | Claimed by the runtime. |
| Running | In progress. |
| Verified | Done, and the result was checked. |
| Waiting for information | Paused, needs something from you. |
| Needs attention | Failed. |
| Check required | Recovery required: see below. |
Note that a step goes to Verified, not "complete". A step is not finished because it returned; it is finished because OOMU confirmed the outcome. The run summary counts them: "{count} confirmed steps."
When a run pauses
A run pauses for one of exactly two reasons:
- Missing information: a required value was not supplied.
- External configuration: something outside OOMU is not set up.
The panel says "One thing is needed" and "Add the missing information and OOMU will continue from this exact step." Supply it and choose Continue. The run resumes from that step, not from the beginning, and the steps already verified are not repeated.
When OOMU restarts mid-run
If OOMU or your Mac restarts while a workflow is running, it reconciles on startup. Steps that were merely reserved are reset so they can run again. Steps that were actually executing are quarantined into Check required, because OOMU cannot know whether they completed.
That is the deliberate choice: an unverifiable step is flagged for you rather than reported as either success or failure. See Evidence & receipts.
Run history
The Runs tab shows "Real progress, steps, and receipts from this workflow." Each run keeps its state, its steps, its outputs, and its receipts.
Outputs are summarized in the shape of the thing produced:
| A document | {name} · {format} · {bytes} bytes |
| A folder listing | {count} items: {names} |
| Web research | {count} sources: {sources} |
Versions
Workflows are versioned. Each saved version keeps its compiled graph, its digest, and the capability manifest version it was authored against.
That matters for scheduling: a routine is bound to a specific version of a workflow. Editing a workflow does not silently change what your schedule runs.
Managing workflows
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Duplicate | Copy it as a starting point. |
| Archive | Move it out of the active list. Restore brings it back. |
| Delete | Staged, with a ten-second Undo, then permanent. |
Workflow states shown on the card are Draft, Ready, Running, Paused, Completed, Needs attention, and Archived.
Then schedule it
Once a workflow works, the Schedules & Triggers section makes it run on its own. See Scheduling routines.
Related
- Scheduling routines: running a saved workflow on a schedule.
- Generating documents: what the Create document step produces.
- Evidence & receipts: what "verified" means here.