Concepts
Analytics and automation
The shape of a healthy flow — from data, through calculation, to a decision and an action.
Every flow reads left to right in the same order:
Data source → Filter / Calculate → Trigger → Action
The first half is analytics: components that show and shape numbers. The second half is automation: components that turn numbers into decisions and decisions into actions.
| Group | What it does | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Data sources | bring data onto the canvas | Bank Account, ERP, Number, Text box |
| Filters | slice records and show them | Timeline, Category, Amount, Table |
| Calculate | do arithmetic and analysis | Add, Subtract, Forecast, Statistics |
| Miscellaneous | everything that shapes or labels | FX Rates, Classify, Payment run |
| Onramp | turn a number into on/off | Range trigger, Compare, Change trigger |
| Control | on/off by hand | Button trigger, Toggle |
| Schedule | on/off by time | Calendar |
| Offramp | turn on/off back into data | Switch |
| Act | do something in the world | Email, Ask AI, Play Sound |
Automating Fluidly
Most visual automation tools are hard to build with and harder still to run. They need developers and engineers, and often code — "low-code" steps that pick attributes out of the data and map one system's fields onto another's. They also carry the data along with the control of the flow, so the control is the data: to know why something happened, you have to dig through what was passed along the way.
Fluidly takes a different approach, built on a few principles:
- Data is never hidden from you. Every number an automation acts on is on the canvas, where you can see it.
- Data and control are separate. The wires that decide when something happens carry only on or off. The data comes from wherever it already is — so an action can use any component on the canvas, without it being passed along a chain first.
An Email, for example, takes its trigger from a Range trigger, its recipients from a Text box, and its body from a Number anywhere else on the canvas. Nothing has to be extracted, mapped or forwarded.
On and off, not messages
Automation components pass state along their wires: green or red. A Range trigger does not send an alert when the balance drops; it is on for as long as the balance is below the line. An Email wired to it sends when it turns on.
That makes automation flows easy to read: every wire shows its state in colour — green when on, red when off — so you can see at a glance why something did, or did not, happen.
Conditions and actions
- A condition states something that is true right now: the balance is below 100,000, it is Wednesday, the button is pressed.
- An action is a piece of work that is carried out once: send this email, play this sound.
An action runs when every condition wired to it agrees. Once it has started, it finishes.
Combining conditions
AND — every trigger has an enable input. Wire one trigger into another's enable, and the second is only on when both are: the balance is below 100,000 and it is a weekday. Chain as many as you need. An action does the same with everything wired to it: it waits until all of them agree.
A typical alert
Bank Account → Range trigger → Email
The Range trigger holds a line you set; when the balance crosses it, the Email sends — to you, your team, or anyone else — with the figures in the body.