Draft a workflow with AI

You do not have to assemble a workflow step by step. Describe what should happen in a sentence, and the AI drafts the steps into the workflow builder. You then review the actual steps, fix anything it flagged, and save, with the same buttons you would have used anyway. The draft itself saves nothing.

Tip

Building an app instead? The Build panel’s Automations tab has a simpler version of the same idea on every plan: describe it, and the AI picks a ready-made automation and fills in its blanks. See Automate your app.

Describe a new workflow

1. Open Workflows in the sidebar and select New Workflow. The start screen opens.

2. Under Describe it in your own words, type what you want, for example: When a task is overdue, wait a day, then email me. Select Fill in the form.

3. The AI proposes when it runs (the trigger), a name and the steps, and the builder opens with them filled in under Filled in from your description, with any cautions listed there. If the AI could not tell when the steps should run, When should it run? appears first: pick the trigger and select Use these steps.

4. Check when it runs and what it does, then save. The new workflow starts paused: Save, keep paused saves it without running it, and Save and turn on saves it and turns it on.

Draft or redraft the steps in the builder

Inside the builder, Describe it with AI (on a new workflow) or Ask AI to change this (on a saved one) opens the panel at the top. It drafts steps for the trigger the workflow already has.

1. Pick the trigger first if the current one is not what you want (Change in the WHEN block). The panel drafts the steps that follow the workflow’s trigger; describing a different trigger in your sentence does not change the trigger.

2. Describe what should happen, for example: When a task becomes overdue, wait a day, then comment on it and email me. On a saved workflow, say what to change. Select Draft the steps.

3. Read Here is what that would do. This readback is rendered from the drafted steps themselves, not from what the model claims it wrote, so it describes exactly what would run.

4. Select Put this on the canvas. The steps land in the builder as ordinary steps under What it does, every one open to editing.

5. Check the steps over, fix anything flagged (below), then save.

What the warnings mean

The draft can arrive with cautions, and they stay on screen after you place the graph, because that is the moment you can act on them:

• An unresolved reference arrives empty, not wrong. If your description names a person, sprint, list, or other thing the AI cannot confidently match to something that already exists in your workspace, it does not guess. The step lands with that field empty and the caution names it, so fill it in before saving. The AI only ever picks from what already exists; it never invents a name.
• A change to an existing workflow that removes a step, or adds one that reaches outside Onplana (a webhook, or an email to an outside address), is called out separately so you notice it before saving.

A refusal is also specific: if the draft would contain steps that could never run, drafting fails with one issue per line rather than handing you a broken workflow.

What drafting will never do

• It saves nothing. The only write is the builder’s own save button, after you have seen the real steps in the builder.
• It never turns a workflow on. A new workflow it filled in starts paused, and a saved one keeps whether it was active or paused. Activation stays a decision you make on the workflow itself.
• Only drafting spends AI tokens. Generating a draft draws on your AI token budget; placing and saving it costs nothing further.

For agents

Connected agents can design workflows through the design_workflow_draft tool: generating returns the same readback and graph a person sees, and saving a graph always requires an explicit acknowledgement after reading the diff. An agent cannot activate a workflow through this tool at all, so anything an agent saves stays off until a person turns it on.

FAQs

Why was my draft refused? The usual reasons: the description was too vague to act on, it asked for something no available step can do, your workspace’s AI token budget is used up, or you hit the drafting rate limit. The refusal says which. You can always build the same workflow by hand in the meantime.

Does the readback update when I edit the steps? No. It described the draft as generated. Once the steps are in the builder, the builder is the truth, which is why the review happens there. The builder’s own In plain words summary does follow your edits.

Which plan do I need? The workflow builder, including this panel, is Pro and above. The simpler describe-and-pick box for app automations in the Build panel works on every plan.

Related

• Build a workflow covers the builder itself: triggers, conditions, branching, delays, and every step type.
• Automate your app is the every-plan cousin for apps built in Onplana.
• Understand your AI token budget explains what drafting spends.