Build a workflow with AI

Drawing a workflow step by step takes time. Instead, you can tell the Copilot — the AI assistant inside your dashboard — what the workflow should do in a sentence or two. It builds a new workflow for you, or changes the one you have open, and you stay in charge of what goes live.

Before you start

The Create with AI and Edit with AI buttons are shown to team members who have the Copilot permission. The Copilot can only do what your own permissions allow, so to build workflows you also need the Workflows permission.

1. Create a new workflow with AI

1. Open Brand → Workflows and click Create with AI at the top of the page. The Copilot opens with the start of a request already typed in: "Build a new chat workflow for the brand … that:". Nothing is sent yet.
2. Finish the sentence in your own words — what should start the workflow, what it should ask or say, and where it should end — and send it.
3. The Copilot plans the workflow and checks it with the same rules as the editor's Save. It may ask you a question or two first.
4. Before it creates anything, it shows a Confirm action card. Click Confirm.
5. The workflow is created switched off, and the Copilot's answer links to it in the editor.
6. Open it, read every step and the trigger, test it, and click Publish when you are happy with it.

2. Change a workflow with AI

1. Open the workflow in the editor and click Edit with AI in the top bar (on a narrow screen only its sparkles icon shows). The Copilot opens with "Change the workflow open in the editor so that:" typed in.
2. Describe the change and send it. The Copilot sees the canvas exactly as it is on your screen, unsaved changes included.
3. When its check passes, an Apply to canvas button appears under it. Click it: the change — steps, trigger and name — lands on the canvas, but nothing is saved yet. A notice says "Applied the Copilot's change — not saved yet".
4. Look the change over. Click Save to keep it, or click Undo in the notice while it is showing to put everything back the way it was.

The Copilot never saves the workflow open in the editor by itself — you always do. Apply to canvas only appears while that workflow is open in the editor; on any other page, such as the Workflows list, there is no such button.

3. Why the AI never switches a workflow on

An AI — the Copilot, or an AI app you connected to Yaplet — never switches a workflow on. Publishing is always a person's decision: Publish in the editor, or the Active switch on the Workflows list. That way nothing an AI wrote reaches your visitors before someone on your team has read it.

For the same reason, an AI creates and changes only workflows that are switched off. If you ask it to change a live workflow anywhere other than in that workflow's editor, it refuses and tells you to switch the workflow off first, or to Duplicate it and let the AI change the copy. Edit with AI works on a live workflow too, because its change only reaches the canvas and you are the one who saves it. An AI may switch a workflow off — for example one that misbehaves.

4. When your developer still has to build the API

Sometimes a workflow needs to call your own system — to look up an order or book an appointment — and the address for that call does not exist yet. The Copilot then adds the Call an API step as a draft, without an address:

• The step's card reads Not set up yet — enter the address.
• Its panel shows a note, What this call must do (written by the AI), describing the call your developer has to build.
• The Copilot also gives you a to-do list of what is left for you and your developer.

When the endpoint exists, type its address — and the shared secret for the Yaplet signature, or any password — into the step yourself. Never paste addresses or secrets into the chat with the AI; the Copilot asks you to type them into the step instead. Click Remove to delete the note once you no longer need it.

While a Call an API step has no address, the workflow can be saved but not switched on: Publish and the Active switch are refused with "Fill in the address of every Call an API step before switching this workflow on." How the step works in detail: Use data from your own system in a workflow.

5. The AI may suggest something simpler

A workflow is a fixed script, and it is often more than you need. Before it builds one, the Copilot may point out something simpler:

• An API tool — the AI looks something up in your system, such as an order's status, and answers in its own words. See Add knowledge to your brand.
• The AI's knowledge — add an article or a question-and-answer pair, and the AI answers that topic however it is asked.
• A chat message — a message that appears by itself on certain pages or after some time. See Send a proactive chat message to visitors.
• A quick button on the widget's Home screen — one tap to a common question, a form or a link.
• A form — several details at once, landing on a ticket.

It is only a suggestion: if you still want a workflow, the Copilot builds what you asked for. For ready-made patterns and more ideas, see the Workflow ideas and recipes documentation.

Next step

Learn what each step the AI used does: Workflow nodes explained. Not sure you need a workflow at all? Read Which chatbot should I use — Vex AI or workflows?