The short version
ORCFLO lets you build automations that do real work for you — things like reading an email and drafting a reply, researching a topic on the web, or turning a messy document into a tidy summary. You describe what you want done once, and ORCFLO can do it for you again and again.
If you've just run one of these automations for the first time, this page explains what actually happened — and how you can change it to fit exactly what you need. No coding required.
Workflows are steps
The automation you ran is called a workflow. A workflow is simply a sequence of steps that run in order, one after another — a recipe your automation follows every time it runs.
The first step does its job and hands its result to the next step, which builds on it and passes things along again, all the way to the end. You can see every step laid out visually in the editor, so it's always clear what happens and in what order.
A workflow can be as small as you like
Some workflows are a single step. Others chain together many. You can start tiny and add more whenever you want.What a step does
Each step is one small job. Most steps fall into one of two kinds:
An AI action
A smart step that reads what came before it and writes something new — summarizing a report, drafting a reply, pulling out the key points, or making a decision about what to do next.
A tool
A step that takes a real action in the world — sending an email, searching the web, reading a web page, or connecting to an app you already use.
Put a few of these together and you have a workflow that can research something, decide what matters, and then act on it — all on its own.
Make it yours
The best part: nothing is locked. Everything you see in the editor is yours to change.
- Edit any step to change what it does or how it behaves.
- Add your own steps to teach the workflow new tricks.
- Run it again anytime and watch each step light up as it works.
You can't break anything
Experiment freely. Change a step, run it, and see what happens — you can always adjust it and run again.When you're ready to go deeper, Understanding Workflows covers how steps pass information to each other, and Your First AI Automation walks you through building one from scratch.
Replay the intro anytime
The first time you open a workflow in the editor, this same introduction plays as a short walkthrough. You can watch it again whenever you like — open the Help menu in the editor and choose “What is ORCFLO?” to replay it from the start.
Where to find it
Look for the Help menu in the top bar of the workflow editor. The “What is ORCFLO?” item is always there, so the walkthrough is only ever one click away.