Workflows

This page is for when the templates aren't quite right. The Playbook editor lets you build a workflow from scratch — or fork a template and modify the parts you need.

You'll find the editor at Playbook → New workflow.

The editor at a glance

The editor has three panes:

Left — the trigger and the step list (drag-and-drop reorderable)
Centre — the currently-selected step (configuration panel)
Right — the dry run panel: a fake invocation showing what each step would do given the current data

You don't have to use the centre + right at the same time. Most builders bounce between them — edit the step, watch the dry run update, tweak, repeat.

The step library

You drag in steps from a palette. The palette is grouped by category:

Read steps

Query metric — fetch a number from a module
Query list — fetch a list of records (deals, customers, employees)
Compare to history — compute a delta vs. a prior period
Compare to cohort — compute a delta vs. peer benchmark

Write steps

Update metric — set a value (with reason)
Update record — change a field on a record (deal stage, customer status)
Open task — create a task with owner, priority, due date
Open form — present a form to the user

Communicate steps

Draft email — composed in the right language for the recipient
Draft WhatsApp — short-form
Send notification — to a workspace member
Schedule meeting — adds to the calendar of the assigned member

Flow steps

Wait — duration or until-date
Decision — branches based on conditions
Sub-workflow — call another Playbook (with its own owner/scope)

Conditions

Conditions are the small expressions inside Decision steps and step-execution gates. The expression language is plain:

revenue_this_month > 1.1 * revenue_last_month
runway_months < 3
team.engineering.attrition_90d > 0.15
flag.severity == "high"

The editor offers autocomplete on metric names and entity fields. You don't need to memorise.

A worked build: monthly board update

Suppose you want to build a workflow that, on the 1st of every month at 9 AM:

Aggregates last month's numbers
Drafts a board update
Asks you to review
Sends it to a fixed list of recipients

The build:

Trigger — Schedule, cron 0 9 1 * *
Step 1 — Query metric: revenue_last_month, pipeline_value, runway_months, headcount, cash_balance
Step 2 — Agent action: "Generate a one-page board update from these numbers, in the format we've used before."
Step 3 — Task: Review the draft. Assigned to: Owner. Due: same day, 11 AM.
Step 4 — Decision: was the draft approved?
- Yes → Step 5
- No → Wait for the task to be closed (back to step 3 with edited draft)
Step 5 — Send email: to the board distribution list. Subject: Board update — {month} {year}.
Closure — Did the email send and not bounce? If yes, complete.

The whole thing is a 6-step Playbook. Most months it runs without your involvement until step 3. Step 3 is the human-in-the-loop checkpoint that exists because board updates are not the place to fully trust automation.

Dry runs

Before you turn a workflow on, run it dry. The Dry run button in the top-right of the editor:

Walks through every step
Uses the current real data, but doesn't write anything
Doesn't send any external messages — drafts are shown in the dry-run panel
Shows you the runtime, the data fetched, the decisions made

Dry runs are free of tokens. Use them generously. Workflow bugs that ship to production are almost always ones the author never dry-ran.

Versioning

Every workflow is versioned. When you save changes, you create a new version (v2, v3…). Past runs remain associated with the version that ran them.

Settings → Playbook → Versions — see every version of every workflow
Revert to version — if you broke something
Diff versions — see what changed between two versions

This is unusual for a no-code tool, but workflows touch real business actions — version history is non-negotiable.

Sharing and forking

A workflow can be shared within your workspace. To share across workspaces, export as a .playbook.json file and import elsewhere.

You can also publish a workflow to your own private library — useful when you've built one for one branch and want to deploy it to others.

Testing a workflow before it touches production

A workflow can be flagged as test-mode. In test-mode:

All write actions go to a sandbox (visible only in the dry-run panel)
All external sends are blocked
The run completes in seconds (no Wait steps actually wait)
The result is a full timeline of what would have happened

When you're happy, switch off test-mode. The workflow is live.

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