Openflow

Controlled AI Task Execution with OpenFlow

The openflow command executes AI tasks with built-in resource limits and real-time progress tracking. A structured workflow prevents runaway execution by enforcing timeouts and limiting operations.

Prerequisites

openflow --version    # Verify installation

For setup details, see https://github.com/Done-0/openflow#readme

Core Workflow

1. List flows: openflow list — see available workflows
2. Inspect: openflow info <flow-name> — view flow details and limits
3. Execute: openflow run <flow-name> --input '{"key": "value"}' — run with parameters
4. Monitor: progress displayed in real-time with resource tracking
5. Complete: automatic limit enforcement prevents runaway execution

Available Flows

openflow list                              # List all flows
openflow list --category research          # Filter by category

search_web

Search the web with strict limits to prevent runaway searches. Uses DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API (free) or Brave Search API (set BRAVE_API_KEY env var for better results).

openflow run search_web --input '{"topic": "AI trends"}'

Use for: Research, competitive analysis, gathering information from the web

Limits: 60s max, 10 results hard limit, 12k tokens

Prevents: Runaway searches (real case: 234 searches, 45 minutes wasted)

explore_codebase

Explore codebases with file limits to prevent reading entire projects.

openflow run explore_codebase --input '{"query": "authentication logic", "path": "."}'

Use for: Understanding large codebases, finding relevant code, navigating projects

Limits: 45s max, 20 files maximum, 15k tokens

Prevents: Reading entire project and exhausting tokens

check_dependencies

Check dependencies with depth limits to prevent recursive analysis. Supports npm, pip, poetry, cargo, go, bundler.

openflow run check_dependencies --input '{"path": "."}'

Use for: Dependency audits, version conflict detection, understanding project dependencies

Limits: 30s max, 50 dependencies maximum, 8k tokens

Prevents: Recursively analyzing entire dependency tree

Commands

# Flow Management
openflow list                              # List available flows
openflow list --category <category>        # Filter by category (research, codebase, dependencies, testing)
openflow info <flow-name>                  # Show flow details, steps, and limits

# Execution
openflow run <flow-name> --input '{"key": "value"}'  # Execute flow with input
openflow run <flow-name> --input '...' --max-time 60  # Custom time limit
openflow run <flow-name> --input '...' --max-calls 30 # Custom tool call limit
openflow run <flow-name> --input '...' --max-tokens 15000  # Custom token limit

# Information
openflow --version                         # Show version
openflow --help                            # Show help

Resource Limits

Each flow has default limits that can be customized:

# Example with custom limits
openflow run search_web \
  --input '{"topic": "AI trends"}' \
  --max-time 60 \
  --max-calls 10 \
  --max-tokens 15000

Output Format

OpenFlow displays progress in the terminal:

[OpenFlow] Execution Plan
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Steps:
  1. Search information   (est. 10s)
  2. Analyze sources      (est. 15s)
  3. Compare findings     (est. 12s)
  4. Generate report      (est. 8s)

Estimated time: 45s
Resource limits: max 10 searches, 60s timeout
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OpenFlow] Progress
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✓ Search information  10.2s (used 10/10 searches)
✓ Analyze sources     12.1s
⟳ Compare findings    9.8s [running...]
○ Generate report

Progress: ████████████░░░░░░░░ 60%
Elapsed: 32.1s / Est. 45s | Searches: 10/10
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OpenFlow] Completed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✓ All steps completed

Execution stats:
  Time: 39.4s (5.6s faster than estimated)
  Searches: 10/10 (100%)
  Token usage: 8.2k/12k (68%)

✓ Task completed within resource limits
✓ Prevented runaway execution
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Common Workflows

Search the Web

openflow run search_web --input '{"topic": "competitor analysis"}'

Explore Large Codebase

openflow run explore_codebase --input '{"query": "payment processing"}'

Check Dependencies

openflow run check_dependencies --input '{"file": "package.json"}'

Generate Tests

openflow run generate_tests --input '{"file": "src/api.py"}'

Command Chaining

Commands can be chained with &&:

openflow list && openflow info search_web
openflow run search_web --input '{"topic": "AI trends"}' && openflow list

Tips

1. Use for high-risk tasks — OpenFlow prevents runaway execution
2. Check flow details first — openflow info <flow> shows steps and limits
3. Set custom limits — Adjust --max-time, --max-calls, --max-tokens as needed
4. Monitor progress — Real-time updates show what's happening
5. Automatic cleanup — OpenFlow executes synchronously and cleans up automatically

Troubleshooting

• Flow not found? openflow list to see available flows
• Input format error? Use single quotes around JSON: --input '{"key": "value"}'
• Run diagnostics: openflow --version and check installation

Cleanup

OpenFlow executes synchronously and cleans up automatically. No manual cleanup needed.