Saved workflows: repeat what the assistant did, by name or on a schedule

The AI assistant does a job once: it reads your notes, writes a draft, files a page, tidies a folder of notes or types into another app, and shows each step. Saved workflows let you keep that job and run it again. Under the assistant's last reply, choose Save as workflow, and Barside keeps your request together with the steps that worked. From then on, the workflow has a name, a card under Agents & approvals → Workflows, a place in the search bar, and, if you want, a schedule.

A workflow is not a macro that replays clicks blindly. Each run goes back through the assistant, which treats the recorded steps as a plan, finds the current notes and windows again, skips steps that no longer apply, and asks you when something is unclear. Every action outside Barside still asks first, and a scheduled run waits in your approval inbox before it starts. This guide covers saving, running, scheduling and the limits.

How saved workflows work

Every time the assistant finishes a request, it records the tools it used and the arguments it gave them: which note it opened, what it searched for, what it typed and where. That list is the workflow's recorded steps. When you save the workflow, Barside cleans the list first:

• Window and control IDs, which are only valid once, are dropped.
• Typed passwords, API keys, tokens, card numbers and one-time codes are replaced by [removed]. Text typed into a password field of another app becomes [typed text removed].
• Long values are shortened, and at most 40 steps are kept.

The saved workflow holds your original request, up to 12,000 characters, and those steps. When it runs, the assistant gets a message that starts with "Run my saved workflow", your request, and the steps as a plan, with a note to treat them as a guide rather than exact values and to ask you for anything marked [removed]. The assistant then works as it always does: it shows each step, applies additions at once, asks before it replaces or deletes anything, and asks before it types or clicks in another app. See AI agents that ask before they act for the rules every agent follows.

How to save a workflow in three steps

1. Open the assistant, with an AI connected in Settings → AI, and give it a request, such as "Turn the newest newsletter in Reading into three short social posts as notes in my Marketing workspace." Let it finish.
2. Under the finished reply, choose Save as workflow. A Workflow name field appears with the first words of your request. Change the name if you like, up to 100 characters.
3. Press Save workflow. Barside says "Saved", with the name, and adds the workflow to Agents & approvals → Workflows.

You can keep up to 100 workflows. A request that is itself a workflow run cannot be saved again, so you never nest one inside another.

Run it again: three ways

From Agents & approvals. Open Agents & approvals in the sidebar (or on the More tab in a mode that hides it) and choose the Workflows tab. Each card shows the workflow's name, the request, and a fold-out with its recorded steps, so you can check what it will do. Press Run. Barside opens the assistant, which starts on the request at once and says it will ask before any action outside Barside. The card also has Rename and Delete; deleting asks you to confirm with Keep or Delete.

From the search bar. Press Alt+Shift+Space in any app, or Ctrl+K in Barside, and type part of the workflow's name. The list shows Run workflow: with the name, marked "Saved workflow". Press Enter, and Barside says "Workflow started." and opens the assistant. The search bar also has a Saved workflows command, alias flows, that opens the Workflows tab.

On a schedule. Each card has a Schedule button; the next section explains it.

The assistant works on one request at a time, so a workflow you start while it is busy begins when it is free. The History tab of Agents & approvals records every start, and the assistant's own conversation shows what each run did, with What changed and Undo on any reply that changed a note.

Schedule a workflow, and approve each run

A schedule makes a workflow ask to run at set times. On its card, choose Schedule and pick:

Tick Ask me to run it on this schedule and press Save schedule. The card gets a Scheduled pill, the next run time, and the words "You approve each run in the Inbox." Untick the box to keep the schedule but pause it (Schedule off), or press Remove schedule.

At the planned time, Barside puts an item in Agents & approvals → Inbox: "Run workflow" with the name, "Planned for" the time, and the full request as a preview you can read and even edit before it runs. Press Approve, and the assistant opens and starts. Press Refuse, and the run is logged as refused and nothing happens. A quiet notification and the count in the sidebar tell you something is waiting, and the tray menu shows Approvals (N waiting).

The schedule follows the rules of every scheduled agent in Barside:

• Times are your computer's local times. On a clock-change day, the chosen hour is kept.
• Nothing runs while your computer is off, asleep or locked. Afterwards, only the latest missed run is made up, and only if it was planned within the last 12 hours. Older ones are logged as skipped in History.
• Editing a schedule starts it fresh from that moment.
• With Barside Plus, scheduled agents can move to Barside's server as cloud agents; saved workflows stay on your computers, because they need the assistant and the apps there.

Workflows worth saving

• Newsletters into posts. "Take the newest item in Reading's Newsletters and write three short social posts as notes in Marketing." Schedule it for weekday mornings, approve it with your coffee, and edit the posts before you use them.
• A weekly tidy-up. "Merge this week's meeting notes in Clients into one note per client, and link each to its project note." The assistant shows a before and after for every rewrite, and Undo takes any of them back.
• A daily reading save. "Save the page open in my browser to Reading and tag it research." Run it by name from the search bar whenever you find something worth keeping.
• A recap after calls. "Turn today's call transcript into a recap note with decisions and tasks." It pairs well with the meeting follow-up built into Library, and with the meeting agent, which can run after every transcript without a workflow at all.
• A morning check. "List what is due today and overdue, and draft a plan for the morning in a new note." If you want this without any AI, the daily briefing shows the same facts on one live page.

Keep each workflow to one job with a clear result. A request that names a workspace, a note or a tag replays more reliably than "the usual".

Details and limits

• Steps are a plan, not a script. Notes are found again by their titles, and windows by their names. If a note was deleted or an app is closed, the assistant says so or asks, rather than guessing.
• Other apps. Typing and clicking in another app works through Windows UI Automation. On Linux, the assistant can focus and minimize windows and press keys, but it cannot read the controls inside other apps, so a workflow that fills a form in another app stays a Windows job. Barside for Mac reads them through System Events. Workflows that stay inside Barside, with notes, tasks and Reading, work the same everywhere.
• Limits. 100 workflows, 100 characters for a name, 12,000 for the request, 40 recorded steps.
• Where they live. Saved workflows are part of your library, next to your scheduled agents. They travel in ZIP backups, and with Barside Plus in cloud sync, so a workflow saved on one computer is on your other computers too. The Inbox and History stay on each computer and are never in a backup. See local-first storage and backups.
• One run at a time. The assistant works on one request at a time. A scheduled run waits in the Inbox in any case, until you approve it.

Privacy

A workflow's request and its steps are stored on your computer, cleaned of secrets as described above. When it runs, the request and the steps go to the AI company you connected in Settings → AI as an ordinary assistant request, with the notes the assistant reads along the way, and that company's data policy applies. Notes and workspaces you left out of Library AI are never given to the assistant. Barside sends nothing to its own servers to run a workflow. Read how agents use your data.

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