flue-workflows

Flue workflows

Write a program when the next work depends on what earlier workers find. Keep ordinary judgment in the main conversation. The program supplies the control flow; Flue supplies the workers. Do not hand the overall task to a supervisor model or replace it with a predefined workflow catalog.

When to use it

Use it when the user asks for Flue workflows, or when the work needs something the host's own subagents or workflow tool cannot give: workers on another provider or subscription, a long fan-out that must survive a crash and resume (within its --timeout), or parallel coding workers in independent Git copies with retained patches. Otherwise prefer the host's mechanism: it needs no setup and no unrestricted local workers.

Start with the work, not a fleet

Scout enough to name the inputs, outputs and decisions. Decide which checks actually need independence and where results must meet. Use ordinary JavaScript for loops, branches, deduplication, voting and stopping rules. Worker roles and result shapes can be invented per call; none must be selected from a catalog.

Before running, establish:

• Authority: workers run local commands and can access the whole host. Obtain explicit unrestricted-access approval. No containers or command approval UI are provided. A private Git copy is not security containment.
• Inputs: name a working directory and put programs in a separate directory. Keep the workflow workspace outside those directories. Do not snapshot a broad home/tmp directory or put changing run files among program inputs.
• Credentials/model: choose explicitly; the authoring host's model, login, instructions and tools are not inherited. --auth pi reads an existing valid OpenAI or Claude subscription login from pi; --auth env:VARIABLE deliberately selects API-key billing (credential sources). Never print, copy or refresh credentials to make a test work.
• Coverage: define complete, partial and failed outcomes; report discovered, attempted, failed and deliberately omitted work. A finished program, valid JSON or a vote count does not prove the answer is true or complete.
• What workers can see: workers cannot see images. Flue's read tool returns a PNG or JPEG as garbled text, with no error. Do not ask workers to check rendered pages, screenshots or charts; look at them in the main session. Drop this note once flue#863 is fixed.