Quickstart

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What you will do

This quickstart walks you through the shortest path to a working workflow:

1. Sign up and onboard.
2. Connect apps.
3. Create a workflow via prompting.
4. Test the workflow.
5. Publish it and verify the first run.

If this is your first time using Workflow Machine, keep the first workflow small. A simple trigger and two or three steps is enough to learn the product.

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Before you start

Choose one outcome you want to automate. Good first examples include:

• Send a Slack message when a webhook is received
• Run a scheduled workflow that summarizes updates
• Collect data from one app and write it into another

You will also want access to at least one app account you can connect, such as Slack, Gmail, Notion, Google Sheets, or Stripe.

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Step 1: Open Workflow Machine

After signing in, you will land in the main product area. The most important sections for a new user are:

• Home for entry points and templates
• Templates for prebuilt workflow ideas
• Connections for app authentication
• Workflows for creating and editing automations
• Settings for profile, subscription and usage information

If you are not sure where to begin, use a template. If you want to understand the product from first principles, start from a blank workflow.

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Step 2: Connect your first app

Before many steps can work, you need a connection. Open Connections and create a connection for the app you plan to use. Depending on the integration, this may use OAuth or API keys. Good first connection choices:

• Slack for notifications
• Gmail for inbox workflows
• Notion for creating or updating pages
• Google Sheets for logging records

Once a connection is created, you can reuse it across multiple workflows.

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Step 3: Create a workflow

Under Home:

• Describe your use case
• Send the prompt

After you send the prompt, Workflow Machine uses AI to work through the workflow setup and assemble the trigger and steps needed for your use case. This gives you a starting workflow structure that you can review, refine, and test before publishing.

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Step 4: Review and refine the workflow

Once the workflow draft is created, review it in the editor and make any changes you want. You can update the trigger, adjust the step order, edit field mappings, remove steps that are not needed, or add new ones yourself. The workflow does not need to stay exactly as AI generated it. You can manually shape it until it matches the process you actually want to run. For a first workflow, keep the structure simple and focus on one clear outcome. After the basic flow looks right, move on to testing.

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Step 5: Test before publishing

Before publishing, run a test. You can test the workflow in different ways depending on what you want to validate:

• Test a single trigger
• Test a single step
• Test a full run using a specific trigger

Testing helps you:

• Check whether the trigger is configured correctly
• Confirm that connected accounts work
• Inspect step outputs
• Catch mapping mistakes before the workflow goes live

If something looks wrong, you can also use AI to help diagnose the issue and suggest what to adjust in the workflow. If a test fails, inspect the step that failed first. Most early problems come from:

• Missing connection setup
• Required fields not being filled in
• Data shape mismatches between steps
• A trigger that was configured differently than expected

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Step 6: Publish and verify the first run

Once the test passes, publish the workflow. After publishing:

• Trigger it with a real input
• Open the run history
• Verify that each step completed as expected

This matters because a passing test is helpful, but a real run confirms that your trigger, connection, and downstream actions all behave correctly in normal conditions.

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Recommended first workflow patterns

If you want something easy to prove out quickly, start with one of these:

• Webhook in, Slack message out
• Schedule in, AI summary out
• Form response in, spreadsheet row out
• Email in, AI classification plus notification out

Each pattern teaches one core part of the product without requiring a large setup.

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Next steps