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Guide · 4 min read

Visual Workflow Builder — getting started

How to build your first automation in Miton's Workflow Surface, from trigger to scheduled run.

Product stage
Pre-release development
Last reviewed
2026-07-23
Successful result
The change is visible in the active project.

What this accomplishes

How to build your first automation in Miton’s Workflow Surface, from trigger to scheduled run.

The Workflow Surface is a visual node-graph builder for automations that run on a schedule, on a webhook, or on demand. This guide walks you through building a first workflow.

Current availability

This page documents behaviour verified in Miton development builds. Miton is still pre-release and is not publicly downloadable; invited beta users will receive a signed desktop build with automatic updates.

Before you start

  • A Miton development build and an active project.
  • A connected cloud or local model, plus any credentials or local runtime required by this task.

Opening the Workflow Surface

From the Home screen, click Workflow in the Workspace switcher (top-left). A blank canvas opens.

Anatomy of a workflow

A workflow has three parts:

  1. Trigger — what starts the run (a schedule, a webhook, a manual run command)
  2. Nodes — the steps the workflow executes, connected left-to-right
  3. Output — the result of the last node (written to a file, sent as a notification, etc.)

Your first workflow: a daily brief

This example pulls a summary of today’s tasks and sends it to a file every morning.

Step 1 — Add a trigger

Click + Trigger on the left edge of the canvas. Select Schedule. Set the cron expression:

0 8 * * 1-5

This fires at 8:00 AM, Monday to Friday. The trigger card shows the next fire time in your local timezone.

Step 2 — Add an AI node

Click + to the right of the trigger card. Select AI node. In the prompt field, enter:

Summarise today's most important tasks in plain English. Keep it under 200 words.

Choose a model (or leave on your default routing profile). The AI node runs this prompt every time the trigger fires.

Step 3 — Add a storage node

Click + to the right of the AI node. Select Storage → Write file. Set the path to:

~/Documents/daily-brief.md

Set Mode to Append with timestamp. Every morning, the brief is appended to the file with the date as a heading.

Step 4 — Run it

Click Run now in the toolbar. The workflow executes immediately (outside the schedule). The Run Inspector panel opens at the bottom. You can see each step: trigger (simulated), AI call (inputs and outputs), file write (path and bytes written).

If the output looks right, click Enable. The workflow is now scheduled and will run automatically.

Node types

Miton ships 18 node kinds — every node in a workflow graph is one of these:

Category Nodes
Triggers trigger (manual, scheduled via cron, webhook)
Input / Output input (typed variables), output (structured result)
AI & Execution llm (any provider/model), tool (any registered tool), code (JavaScript or Python), subagent (spawn an isolated daemon)
Flow control branch (if/else), loop (iterate), merge (join branches)
Integration http (REST with auth), rss (parse feeds), email (SMTP send)
Events & gates fs-watch (file-system watcher), git-event (branch/tag/commit), approval (human gate)
Miton-native moirai_advance (milestone progress), memory_write (write to memory store)

All node kinds ship in Community Edition — there is no separate node pack. $vault.X injects secrets at execution time; they never appear in the graph JSON.

The cron scheduler

The workflow scheduler runs on your machine. It is not a cloud trigger — it executes locally. If your machine is off when a run was scheduled, missed-fire backfill kicks in on next startup and runs any skipped executions.

Using workflow presets

Click Templates in the toolbar to open the preset library. Ten presets are available:

  • wf-rss-email — RSS feed → email digest
  • wf-daily-standup — daily LLM briefing
  • wf-social-scheduler — schedule social media posts
  • wf-file-backup — backup files on a schedule
  • wf-form-spreadsheet — collect form responses
  • wf-scheduled-report — periodic report generation
  • wf-webhook-receiver — HTTP-triggered workflow
  • wf-weekly-summary — weekly project summary
  • wf-calendar-prep — calendar event preparation
  • wf-content-monitor — monitor content for changes

Select a preset to load it as a starting point. All nodes are editable. See apps/desktop/src/lib/workflowPresets.ts for the canonical preset definitions.

What success looks like

How to build your first automation in Miton’s Workflow Surface, from trigger to scheduled run. The result remains attached to the active project when you move to another workspace.

Common failures and recovery

  • Confirm the correct project and model are active.
  • Read the exact error and the requested permission before retrying.
  • Retry only the failed step so completed project work remains intact.