Flow Graphs¶

Flow graphs let you author the agent's path explicitly — conditional routing and bounded loops (refine→judge, retry-until-pass, escalation) declared as nodes and edges under the same workflow: key, with crash-safe checkpointing built in.

Quick Start: Refine → Judge → Ship¶

A writing pipeline that drafts, gets judged, loops back to refine until the judge approves (at most 5 times), then ships:

agents/draft-shipper/SOUL.yaml

id: draft-shipper
name: Draft Shipper
description: Draft, judge, refine until approved, then publish.
trigger: channel
channels: [http]
llm:
  provider: anthropic
  model: claude-sonnet-4-6
system_prompt: Run the drafting flow.

agents: [editor]            # peer used by the ship node

workflow:
  entry: refine                  # default: first node
  max_node_executions: 50        # global safety budget (default 100)
  nodes:
    - id: refine
      tool: improve_draft        # kind inferred: tool
      input: '{"topic": {{.trigger | printf "%q"}}, "feedback": {{.verdict.feedback | printf "%q"}}}'
      output: draft

    - id: judge
      tool: evaluate_draft
      input: '{"draft": {{.draft | printf "%q"}}}'
      output: verdict            # JSON result → fields addressable in predicates

    - id: ship
      agent: editor              # kind=agent → invoked as agent__editor
      input: 'Publish this approved draft: {{.draft}}'

  edges:
    - {from: refine, to: judge, max_iterations: 6}
    - {from: judge, to: refine, if: '{{not .verdict.ok}}', max_iterations: 5}
    - {from: judge, to: ship}    # fallback — order matters
    - {from: ship, to: end}      # "end" (or no edge) terminates

enabled: true

The judge's tool returns JSON like {"ok": false, "feedback": "tighten the intro"}; the back edge fires while ok is false, and its max_iterations: 5 guarantees the loop terminates. When ok turns true (or the budget runs out), the fallback edge ships the draft.

Nodes¶

Field	Notes
`id`	Unique within the flow; checkpoint keys derive from it.
`kind`	`tool` \| `agent` \| `branch`. Usually inferred: `tool:` set → tool, `agent:` set → agent, neither → branch.
`tool`	Tool to invoke (any tool the agent can normally call).
`agent`	Peer agent to invoke as `agent__<id>` — declare it in the agent's `agents:` list.
`input`	Go template over flow vars producing the node's input.
`output`	Flow variable that stores this node's result.
`on_error`	`abort` (default) \| `skip` \| `retry`.

branch nodes do no work — they exist purely to fan edges out from one decision point.

Edges and Predicates¶

Edges leaving a node are evaluated in declaration order; the first edge whose if renders truthy and whose traversal budget remains is taken. No eligible edge ends the flow with the last node's result.

Field	Notes
`from` / `to`	Node IDs. `to: end` (or omitted) terminates the flow.
`if`	Go template predicate over flow vars. Empty, `true`, or any non-zero output = take the edge; empty string, `false`, or `0` = don't.
`max_iterations`	How many times this edge may be traversed per run. Default 1.

Flow variables are .trigger (the inbound message) plus every node's output. Tool results that are JSON documents are unwrapped so predicates can address fields ({{.verdict.ok}}); plain text stays a string.

Bounded Cycles¶

Cycles terminate by construction:

Every edge defaults to max_iterations: 1 — a back edge must explicitly raise its budget to loop (max_iterations: 5 above).
max_node_executions (default 100) backstops the entire run; exceeding it aborts the flow.

Warning

Remember to raise max_iterations on the forward edge into a looped node too — in the example, refine → judge carries max_iterations: 6 because it is traversed once per refinement pass.

Checkpointing and Resume¶

Each node visit checkpoints under <node>#<visit> in the same store as linear workflows. Resuming a crashed run ID restores completed visits — flow variables included — and recomputes the same deterministic path, so only unfinished work executes. Side effects are never repeated.

Graphs are validated at load time: duplicate or missing node IDs, unknown edge endpoints, bad kinds, and unknown entry nodes are refused with precise errors before the agent ever runs.

Two Ways to Run a Flow¶

The same graph serves two entry points:

Workflow runs — cron/scheduled or triggered runs execute the graph through the checkpointing workflow executor (the example above).
Chat runs — set reasoning.strategy: flow and chat messages route through the graph as a reasoning strategy. Node actions go through the engine's standard tool-policy bridge (sandbox, allowlists, confirmation gates), and each node visit surfaces as a reasoning.step event in the Chat thinking section and Activity feed — see Reasoning Strategies.

reasoning:
  strategy: flow      # chat messages walk workflow.nodes/edges

Seeing the Graph¶

The Flow View page renders graph-form agents read-only: nodes laid out in BFS columns, entry wired from the trigger, predicates and ↺×N iteration budgets labeled on edges, cycle back-edges highlighted, and terminal edges into Output. Editing the graph visually is planned; for now the YAML is the source of truth.

When To Use a Flow¶

Quality loops: draft → judge → refine until pass.
Retry-until-success with an escalation path on exhaustion.
Multi-branch routing where the next step depends on structured output.

Prefer linear steps when the pipeline never branches, and a free-form reasoning strategy when the model should invent the plan itself.