Workflows

A workflow is an agent whose behavior is a graph of nodes rather than a single loop: node types, branching, human steps, retries, triggers, staged versus live, and how runs are monitored.

Workflows are listed under Workflows in the left column of Xpander Chat, and can be hidden per user group.

A workflow is an agent of type orchestration. It has a name, a model and skills like any agent, but instead of one reasoning loop its behavior is a graph of nodes that xpander walks one by one, so you decide the order, the branches and where a person steps in. Each run is a task like any other, with the same record, budget and approvals.

Nodes

Node	What it does
Agent	Runs one of your agents on the current input
Workflow	Runs another workflow
Action	Calls one skill action directly
Custom action, Code	Runs a custom action or a code snippet
Send email	Sends an email
OCR	Extracts text from an image
Classifier	Sorts the input into groups; downstream nodes attach to a group
Guardrail	Checks the input against a rule and routes to pass or fail
Condition	Routes on a rule
Wait	Pauses the run for a webhook or for a person, for days if needed, then continues
Parallel	Runs branches at the same time
Summarizer, Send to end	Shape or short-circuit the final answer
Schedule	Books the run’s next step for later, forward or back in the graph, up to a set number of times

The node picker also offers two routing choices that add no node: Go to existing node continues at a step already in the workflow, and Pick on canvas lets you click that step on the graph.

Edges are ordered lists of next nodes; the first regular node is the entry, and a special end summarizer produces the output. Branching conditions are regex, contains, equals, greater or less than, not empty, and else. Each node can carry a retry strategy (up to a set number of retries), an iterative strategy (repeat until a condition), a stop strategy (stop on failure or on a condition) and duplicate prevention (ignore the same input again within a window).

The node picker in the workflow editor, grouped as Routing, Agents, Actions and Flow. The list scrolls; shown here in two parts. Shown with sample data.

Triggers

The Start node lists four triggers and whether each is live: API (always, at the workflow’s id), Webhook (a URL that is itself the credential), Slack (the channels routed to the workflow) and Schedule (a cron in UTC). Triggers publish the moment they are switched on. An incoming email can also start a workflow run.

Staged and live

Edits to a workflow are staged: the API’s PATCH /v1/workflows/{workflow_id} changes the draft, PUT deploys it, and ?version=draft runs the draft on POST /v1/workflows/{workflow_id}/invoke. In Xpander Chat an applied change marks the workflow DRAFT and opens a bar reading “1 pending change, Staged for review”: Review shows the diff, Publish makes it live, and Discard deletes the draft and returns the editor to the live workflow. The Runs menu next to the name lists past runs behind a search box. A workflow is not listed among agents; GET /v1/workflows lists workflows, and asking the workflow endpoint for an agent id says so.

A staged workflow with a pending change, ready to publish.

Runs

Every run of the workflow appears under Runs in the editor as it happens, with its status. Each node shows its recent runs. Opening a run shows its task record: the execution log, the files and the cost. A run paused at a wait node holds its state for up to thirty days. It resumes when the webhook arrives or the person decides.