Steps are added from a searchable palette, and ordered by the arrows you draw between them. An arrow means "wait for that, then run"; steps with no arrow between them run in parallel.
Outcome
Your workflow's steps are on the canvas in the right order, with no step left unreachable.
1. Add a step
There is no drag-and-drop tray. Open the palette one of three ways:
- click the
+beneath a selected step, - click the
+under the Start here — add the first step card on an empty canvas, or - press
Cmd/Ctrl+Kwith focus on the canvas.
Type in Search steps… and the palette narrows; a Recent section remembers what you reached for last. Clicking an entry places the step already wired to whatever it was opened from.
Seven step types can be added this way. See Step types for the full list.
2. Connect it
Drag from one step's handle to another's.
While you drag, every step the connection cannot legally reach outlines itself in red. That is either a cycle — the target already leads back to where you started — or a step already reachable from where you started.
Hodoflow keeps the graph free of arrows that another path already implies, so adding a shortcut can silently remove one. A toast at the bottom of the screen tells you when that happened and why. The graph still runs in exactly the same order; only the redundant arrow is gone.
3. Clear the warnings
A step with no arrow coming into it shows No parent step on its card and counts toward the invalid nodes total in the toolbar. So does a step that is not fully configured.
Invalid nodes will not stop you saving. They will stop you activating.
Checkpoint: the toolbar's invalid nodes count reads zero.
Handling errors
Select a step and use On error to create a recovery branch or connect to an existing step. Several fault sources can share the same recovery step, and fault branches can reconnect to the main flow. Legacy compensation connections must be explicitly converted or removed before activation. See On error paths.
Working with several steps at once
Drag a box around steps, or shift-click them, and the inspector switches to Duplicate, Copy, and Delete for the whole selection.
Common problems
The step I want is not in the palette. Six step types run in the engine but have no palette entry yet. Step types marks which.
My arrow disappeared right after I drew another one. The new arrow made the old one redundant, so it was pruned. Nothing about the run order changed.
A step outlines red while I drag. That connection would create a cycle, or duplicate a path that already exists. Connect from a different step, or change the direction.
The canvas says No parent step. Nothing runs that step. Draw an arrow
into it, or delete it.