AbstractFlow

Diagram-based, durable AI workflows for Python.

AbstractFlow is part of the AbstractFramework ecosystem. The editor is Gateway-first: AbstractFlow talks to AbstractGateway for discovery, persistence, runs, ledgers, artifacts, and media. Gateway owns the Runtime/Core deployment stack.

It provides:

• A small programmatic API (Flow, FlowRunner) for building and running flows in Python.
• A portable workflow format (VisualFlow JSON) + helpers to execute it from any host (abstractflow.visual).
• A Gateway-first visual editor app in web/ (React frontend + /api/gateway/* proxy).

Project status: Pre-alpha (pyproject.toml: Development Status :: 2 - Pre-Alpha). Expect breaking changes.

Evidence (code): abstractflow/runner.py, abstractflow/visual/executor.py, abstractflow/cli.py, web/backend/routes/ws.py.

Diagram (how it fits together)

flowchart LR
  UI[Visual editor UI<br/>npx @abstractframework/flow] <-->|/api/gateway/*| GW[AbstractGateway<br/>discovery/runs/ledger/artifacts/bundles/media]
  GW --> RT[AbstractRuntime Runtime]
  RT --> AC[AbstractCore providers/models/tools]

  HOST[Any host process<br/>CLI / server / notebook] --> VF[VisualFlow models<br/>abstractflow/visual/models.py]
  HOST --> RUN[create_visual_runner / execute_visual_flow<br/>abstractflow/visual/executor.py]
  RUN -. optional local compatibility .-> RT
  RT --> STORES[(Run/Ledger/Artifacts stores)]

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Docs

Published documentation: https://www.lpalbou.info/AbstractFlow/

• Getting started: docs/getting-started.md
• API (high-level): docs/api.md
• Architecture: docs/architecture.md
• FAQ: docs/faq.md
• VisualFlow JSON format: docs/visualflow.md
• CLI: docs/cli.md
• Visual editor: docs/web-editor.md
• Docs index: docs/README.md

Installation

pip install abstractflow

Requirements: Python 3.10+ (pyproject.toml: requires-python).

Optional extras (declared in pyproject.toml):

• Host profiles for local programmatic/VisualFlow execution compatibility (Flow, FlowRunner, execute_visual_flow, workflow bundles): pip install "abstractflow[apple]" or pip install "abstractflow[gpu]"
• Full host profiles:
  • Apple-capable: pip install "abstractflow[apple]"
  • GPU-capable: pip install "abstractflow[gpu]"
• abstractflow[apple] and abstractflow[gpu] pull the matching abstractgateway[...] host profile and Visual Agent support. Flow no longer names AbstractRuntime or abstractcore directly in these profiles; Gateway owns that deployment stack. AbstractFlow 0.3.17 expects Gateway >=0.2.23 for the current image/video media, progress, catalog, and residency contracts.
• Agent nodes only, without the host profile: pip install "abstractflow[agent]"
• Documentation site tools: pip install "abstractflow[docs]"

Quickstart (programmatic)

# Requires: `abstractflow[apple]` or `abstractflow[gpu]`
from abstractflow import Flow, FlowRunner

flow = Flow("linear")
flow.add_node("double", lambda x: x * 2, input_key="value", output_key="doubled")
flow.add_node("add_ten", lambda x: x + 10, input_key="doubled", output_key="final")
flow.add_edge("double", "add_ten")
flow.set_entry("double")

print(FlowRunner(flow).run({"value": 5}))
# {"success": True, "result": 20}

Quickstart (execute a VisualFlow JSON)

import json
from abstractflow.visual import VisualFlow, execute_visual_flow

# Requires: `abstractflow[apple]` or `abstractflow[gpu]`
with open("my-flow.json", "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    vf = VisualFlow.model_validate(json.load(f))

print(execute_visual_flow(vf, {"prompt": "Hello"}, flows={vf.id: vf}))

If your flow uses subflows, load all referenced *.json into the flows={...} mapping (see docs/getting-started.md).

Visual editor (Gateway-first)

The visual editor talks to AbstractGateway through the Flow proxy. Browser sessions sign in with a Gateway URL, Gateway user id, and that user's Gateway token. Flow validates the token, exchanges it through Gateway /api/gateway/session/login, stores only the opaque Gateway browser session in an HTTP-only Flow cookie, and forwards that session server-side to Gateway. Flow reads Gateway Set-Cookie headers server-side and does not return the Gateway session id or CSRF token in the connection response body. The raw user token is not retained after sign-in. Mutating Gateway proxy calls also carry a CSRF token. A server/admin Gateway token does not sign in browsers, so a distinct browser must provide its own user token. Gateway owns the user's runtime mapping and returns it as read-only principal metadata. Remote browsers may provide a token for the server-configured Gateway URL, but they cannot change that URL unless ABSTRACTFLOW_ALLOW_REMOTE_BROWSER_GATEWAY_CONFIG=1 is set.

# Terminal 1: Gateway
pip install abstractgateway abstractflow
export ABSTRACTGATEWAY_AUTH_TOKEN=dev-token
export ABSTRACTGATEWAY_USER_AUTH=1
abstractgateway serve --port 8080

# In another shell, create the browser sign-in user and keep the returned token.
curl -sS -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/gateway/admin/users \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer dev-token" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"user_id":"admin","roles":["admin","user"],"runtime_id":"default"}'

# Terminal 2: editor UI (static server + /api/gateway proxy)
npx @abstractframework/flow --gateway-url http://127.0.0.1:8080

Open:

• UI: http://localhost:3003
• Gateway capabilities: http://localhost:8080/api/gateway/discovery/capabilities

Media nodes use Gateway as the catalog and execution source. Generate Image, Edit Image/Image-to-Image, Generate Video, Image-to-Video, Generate Voice, Generate Music, Transcribe Audio, and Listen Voice expose Gateway Media controls populated from catalog routes such as /api/gateway/vision/models, /api/gateway/vision/provider_models, /api/gateway/voice/voices, /api/gateway/audio/speech/models, /api/gateway/audio/transcriptions/models, and /api/gateway/audio/music/{providers,models}. When Gateway exposes common.readiness, Flow uses it as a conservative surface-readiness overlay while still resolving concrete calls from endpoint descriptors. Generated images, videos, voice, and music are artifacts; the Run modal renders previews/players from Gateway artifact content and keeps abstract.progress ledger events visible for long media runs while leaving raw ledger JSON available for debugging. Artifact inputs can search Gateway artifacts by modality/scope/metadata when the Gateway advertises search. Generated artifact cards keep a direct artifact content open/download link; workspace file export is reserved for explicit graph-level file/artifact IO nodes.

The abstractflow serve/FastAPI host is a Gateway proxy by default. Its old local /api/flows, /api/ws, and /api/runs compatibility routes are available only when ABSTRACTFLOW_ENABLE_LOCAL_RUNTIME=1 is set. See docs/web-editor.md and docs/architecture.md.

CLI (WorkflowBundle .flow)

abstractflow bundle pack web/flows/ac-echo.json --out /tmp/ac-echo.flow
abstractflow bundle inspect /tmp/ac-echo.flow
abstractflow bundle unpack /tmp/ac-echo.flow --dir /tmp/ac-echo

See docs/cli.md and abstractflow/cli.py.

Related projects

• AbstractFramework: https://github.com/lpalbou/AbstractFramework
• AbstractRuntime: https://github.com/lpalbou/abstractruntime
• AbstractCore: https://github.com/lpalbou/abstractcore
• AbstractAgent (optional): https://github.com/lpalbou/AbstractAgent

Repo policies

• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
• Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
• Security: SECURITY.md
• Acknowledgments: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md
• License: LICENSE