---
title: Workflows
description: Create, edit, run, debug, deploy, and organize workflows from Mothership.
---

import { Image } from '@/components/ui/image'
import { Video } from '@/components/ui/video'
import { FAQ } from '@/components/ui/faq'

<Video src="mothership/create-workflow.mp4" width={700} height={450} />

Describe a workflow and Mothership builds it. Reference an existing one by name and it edits it. No canvas navigation required — every change appears in the resource panel in real time.

## Creating Workflows

Describe what the workflow should do — what triggers it, what it should do, which integrations it needs, and what it should return. Mothership builds it and opens the canvas in the resource panel.

- "Build a workflow that takes a URL, scrapes the page, summarizes it with Claude, and sends the summary to a Slack channel"
- "Create a workflow triggered by a webhook that extracts invoice data from a PDF and writes it to the billing table"
- "Build an outbound workflow: take a company name and domain, enrich it with firmographic data, score the fit, and draft a personalized cold email"
- "Create a lead enrichment workflow that takes an email from a form submission, looks up the company, and writes the enriched record to the leads table"
- "Build a customer onboarding workflow: when a new user signs up, send a welcome email, create a HubSpot contact, and post a notification to #new-customers in Slack"

## Editing Workflows

{/* TODO: Screenshot of Mothership with the Edit subagent active and a change applied to an open workflow — e.g., a new block added or a configuration updated, visible on the canvas in the resource panel. */}

Open an existing workflow with `@workflow-name` or the **+** menu, then describe the change. Mothership reads the current structure before modifying it — you don't need to explain what already exists.

- "Add a condition that routes to a different branch if the confidence score is below 0.7"
- "Replace the GPT-4o model with Claude Opus 4.6 on the summarizer block"
- "Add a Slack notification at the end that includes the output"

## Running Workflows

<Video src="mothership/run-workflow.mp4" width={700} height={450} />

Ask Mothership to run a workflow and it handles the execution:

- "Run the data sync workflow"
- "Run the invoice processor with this PDF [attach file]"
- "Test the lead scoring workflow with these inputs: name=Acme, score=0.4"

Execution streams back to the chat. The workflow in the resource panel shows live block-by-block state.

## Reading Logs

Mothership can retrieve and interpret execution logs for any workflow in the workspace:

- "Show me the last 10 runs of the pipeline workflow"
- "Why did the invoice workflow fail yesterday?"
- "What did the extractor block return in the most recent run?"

Logs include per-block execution state, outputs, errors, and timing.

## Debugging

When a workflow fails, tell Mothership to debug it:

- "Debug the last failed run of the content pipeline"
- "The summarizer block is returning empty output — figure out why"

Mothership reads the failure logs, identifies the cause, applies a fix, and can re-run to confirm.

{/* TODO: Screenshot of the Debug subagent section in the Mothership chat showing it reading logs and applying a fix. */}

## Deploying

Mothership can deploy a workflow as any of the three deployment types:

| Deployment type | What it creates |
|----------------|----------------|
| **API** | A REST endpoint at `https://sim.ai/api/workflows/{id}/execute` |
| **Chat** | A hosted conversational interface with a shareable URL |
| **MCP tool** | An MCP server that exposes the workflow as a tool |

Ask: "Deploy the invoice workflow as an API and generate an API key."

Mothership can also roll back: "Revert the billing workflow to the version from last Tuesday."

See [API Deployment](/workflows/deployment/api) and [Chat Deployment](/workflows/deployment/chat) for full details on each deployment type.

## Organizing Workflows

Mothership can create and manage folders to keep your workspace organized.

**Folders:**
- "Create a folder called 'Data Pipelines'"
- "Move the invoice workflow into the billing folder"
- "Move the billing folder inside the finance folder"
- "Delete the old-experiments folder"

**Renaming and moving:**
- "Rename the 'test_v2' workflow to 'lead-scorer'"
- "Move the summarizer workflow to the research folder"

{/* TODO: Screenshot showing Mothership confirming a folder or workflow organization action — e.g., a message confirming "Moved 'invoice-processor' into 'billing' folder" with the resource panel showing the folder open. */}

## Workflow Variables

Mothership can set global variables on a workflow — values accessible across all blocks in that workflow at runtime:

- "Set the API_ENDPOINT variable on the sync workflow to 'https://api.example.com/v2'"
- "Update the MAX_RETRIES variable on the pipeline workflow to 5"

Variables set this way are available via `<variable.VARIABLE_NAME>` syntax inside any block in the workflow.

## Deleting Workflows

- "Delete the old_api_prototype workflow"
- "Delete all workflows in the deprecated folder"

<FAQ items={[
  { question: "Can Mothership edit a workflow while it's deployed?", answer: "Yes. Editing a workflow does not affect the live deployment. The deployed version is a snapshot — you need to ask Mothership to redeploy to push changes to production." },
  { question: "Can I run a workflow with specific inputs from Mothership?", answer: "Yes. Describe the inputs in your message and Mothership passes them to the workflow's start block." },
  { question: "How does Mothership know what my workflow does?", answer: "When you reference a workflow, Mothership loads its full structure — every block, connection, and configuration — before acting on it." },
  { question: "What happens to a workflow's deployment when I delete it?", answer: "The workflow and all its deployments are permanently removed. Any API endpoints, chat URLs, or MCP tools that pointed to that workflow will stop working." },
]} />
