Quickstart

This walks you from a fresh install to a real run in a few commands, using nothing but the published relayflows CLI. No scaffolder, no project template.

1. Install

npm init -y
npm install @relayflows/surface relayflows

TypeScript flows import @relayflows/surface at runtime, so it's a project dependency. YAML is data — the global relayflows install is all you need.

2. Write a flow

// hello.flow.ts
import { flow } from '@relayflows/surface';

export default flow('hello', async (f) => {
  const greeting = await f.run('printf "Hello from Relayflows"');
  console.log(greeting.trim());
  f.done('success');
});

YAML is canonical — the compiler can check it without running anything. TypeScript is the power tool: the same primitives, called imperatively, with ordinary if/for control flow around each await.

3. Run it

npx flows run hello.flow.ts --input '{}'

This is a real, captured run:

Hello from Relayflows
RUN 01M26JC2VPAGFVTCVWFT3GSCXQ completed (2 steps) completionReason: success

Every step's outcome is in the journal now, keyed by that run ID. flows check only takes a flow.yaml or spec.json — a TypeScript flow gets the same preflight for free, as the first thing flows run does.

4. If it gets interrupted

flows run starts a background daemon, relayflowd. The journal lives there, not in the CLI process you typed the command into. Close the terminal, lose power, or kill the daemon itself mid-run: nothing is lost.

flows resume 01M26JC2VPAGFVTCVWFT3GSCXQ

resume starts a fresh daemon if none is up, reads the journal from disk, and continues from the first step that never recorded a completionReason — the step already marked done doesn't run again.

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