How it works

A complete walkthrough: design a flow, test it in the browser, download a Go project, run it (interactively or headless), and ship a distributable CLI. For field-by-field detail, see the Block reference and Templates & expressions.

1. Build a flow

Open the builder and stack blocks. There are three families:
  • Interactive — text_input, select, multi_select, confirm, password gather input.
  • Action — http_request, set_variable, condition compute and branch.
  • Output — output_text, output_table, output_json print results.
Flow is top-to-bottom by default. A condition routes to the branch target you set in its config; once you branch, execution stops there unless that step branches again.

2. Test in the browser

Click Test, then Run. The flow runs in an in-browser terminal — answer prompts and watch the output. Templates resolve exactly as they will in the compiled binary.

HTTP blocks call real APIs via fetch(), so APIs that send no CORS headers cannot be reached from the browser. The compiled Go binary has no such limitation. When a request is blocked, the terminal tells you.

3. Download the Go project

Click Go Project to download a ZIP containing a complete, self-contained Go project:
my-flow/
├── main.go            // embeds workflow.json
├── internal/          // the runtime (executor, template, blocks, UI)
├── workflow.json
├── go.mod / go.sum
├── Makefile
├── .goreleaser.yml
└── .github/workflows/release.yml

4. Run

Build the binary, then run it interactively or non-interactively:
unzip my-flow.zip && cd my-flow
make build
./my-flow                       # interactive (TTY)

Flags

-i, --input id=valuePre-fill a prompt (repeatable). Lets you run headless.
--dump-steps pathWrite the final context.steps as JSON — handy for debugging.
-v, --versionPrint name and version.
-h, --helpShow usage.

Headless / CI — supply every prompt via --input:

./my-flow --input user=ada --input env=prod

Input value formats

  • text_input / password — the literal string.
  • confirm — true, 1, y, or yes (case-insensitive) for true; anything else is false.
  • multi_select — comma-separated values, e.g. --input addons=auth,logs.

Secrets: prefer an env var over --input

--input values are visible in ps and shell history. For a password step, export CLIFLOW_INPUT_<step_id> instead. It answers the prompt and is never echoed. Precedence: --input > CLIFLOW_INPUT_*> interactive prompt. An empty env var supplies an empty value (the prompt is skipped). The <step_id> suffix must match the id exactly, including case.

export CLIFLOW_INPUT_api_key=sk_...
./my-flow            # the api_key step is answered from the env

Private / internal APIs

The binary blocks requests to loopback, private, and link-local addresses (an SSRF guard). To call an internal host, set CLIFLOW_ALLOW_PRIVATE_HTTP=1.

5. Distribute

Push the project to GitHub, then:
git tag v1.0.0
git push --tags
The included GitHub Action builds all 6 targets (macOS/Linux/Windows × amd64/arm64) and publishes a Release. For Homebrew, point a tap formula at the Release archives.

6. Reference

For the detail behind every block and the template grammar: