# Builder basics

> Find your way around the workflow canvas — the inspector, the toolbar, and what is saved versus what is only on screen.

The builder is one canvas with an inspector down the right-hand side and a
toolbar across the top. Nothing you do reaches the server until you press
**Save**, so you can rearrange, delete, and reconnect freely while you think.

## Outcome

You can open any workflow, read what the canvas is telling you, and change it
without guessing which actions are permanent.

## Before you start

The builder needs a desktop or laptop browser. On a phone, opening a workflow
shows a read-only diagram of the graph instead.

## The canvas

A brand-new workflow opens on the trigger wizard, because a workflow with
nothing to start it can never run. See
[Choose a trigger](/help/workflows/choose-a-trigger).

After that you are looking at nodes and arrows. A node is one step's card. An
arrow means the step it points at waits for the step it comes from.

**Positions do not matter.** Only the connections are saved. Hodoflow runs its
own layout every time you open a workflow, so a canvas you tidied yesterday
will be re-laid-out today, and moving a node never counts as a change. **Auto
Layout** in the toolbar re-runs the layout on demand.

## The inspector

Click a step to open it. Three things sit at the top of every step's inspector:

| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| **Name** | The label on the card. Change it freely. |
| **API Name** | The identifier formulas and templates use to reach this step's output. |
| **Configuration** / **Policy** tabs | Everything else — the step's own settings, and its retry behaviour. |

**API Name** is worth setting early. Downstream steps refer to this one by that
name, so changing it later means revisiting whatever already points at it. See
[Use fields from an earlier step](/help/workflows/map-upstream-fields).

Select more than one step — drag a box around them, or shift-click — and the
panel switches to **Duplicate**, **Copy**, and **Delete** for the whole
selection.

## The toolbar

| Indicator | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **Unsaved changes** | Something has changed that is not written yet. |
| **Draft changes** | Same, on a workflow version that has already been published. Saving will fork a new version. |
| **invalid nodes** count | How many steps are incomplete or unreachable. Zero is required to activate. |
| `v1`, `v2`, … | Which version of this workflow you have open. |

**Monitor** in the toolbar opens the run history pre-filtered to this workflow.
**Edit details** changes the name and description without touching the graph.

## Undo and redo

Undo and redo cover structural changes — adding, deleting, connecting, and
configuring. They deliberately ignore node positions and selection, so undo
never reshuffles your canvas as a side effect of undoing a real edit.

## Common problems

**My layout keeps changing.** That is expected. Positions are not saved; the
graph is laid out from its connections every time it loads.

**The step palette will not open.** Click the `+` beneath a selected step, or
the `+` under the **Start here — add the first step** card on an empty canvas.
`Cmd`/`Ctrl` + `K` opens it too, as long as focus is on the canvas rather than
inside an inspector field.

**I cannot edit on my phone.** The builder is desktop only. The mobile view is
a read-only diagram.

## Next step

[Add and connect steps](/help/workflows/add-and-connect-steps).