Actions

Actions are what workflows actually do. Each action takes input, performs a task, and produces output for later steps.

How Actions Work

Every action follows the same pattern:

You configure inputs in the properties panel, and access outputs via variables like {{steps.action_name.field}}.

Flint provides several categories of actions:

Transform documents and extract structured data:

Extract Document — Use AI to pull data from PDFs, images, and scanned documents. Define a schema and the AI extracts matching fields.
Fill Document — Populate templates with workflow data to generate completed documents.

Common Pattern

Extract data from an incoming document, review it with an intervention, then fill a different template with the verified data.

Use AI to create content or make decisions:

Generate Text — Produce written content like summaries, responses, or reports based on prompts and context.
Generate Object — Create structured JSON data—useful for categorization, extraction, or decision-making with predictable output shapes.

Interact with websites that don't have APIs:

Browser Task — Describe what you want to do in plain English, and AI-powered automation handles the clicks, typing, and navigation.
Scrape Website — Extract specific data from web pages using CSS selectors.

See Browser Tasks for details.

Connect with the outside world:

HTTP Call — Make requests to any REST API. Supports GET, POST, PUT, DELETE with headers, authentication, and body configuration.
Send Notification — Alert team members via email or in-app notifications.
Trigger Workflow — Start another workflow as a subworkflow, passing data and optionally waiting for results.

For third-party services, see Integrations.

Manage workflow execution:

Delay — Pause execution for a specified duration. Useful for rate limiting or waiting for external processes.
Intervention — Pause for human review. See Interventions.
Log — Record information to the run history for debugging and auditing.

When you add an action:

Select it on the canvas
Fill required fields in the properties panel
Use variables to reference dynamic data: {{trigger.field}} or {{steps.previous.output}}
Toggle expression mode for computed values

Most fields support both static values and expressions. Click the toggle icon to switch.

Every action produces output accessible to later steps:

{{steps.extract_invoice.vendor_name}}
{{steps.http_call.response.data}}
{{steps.generate_text.text}}

Use the variable picker (click the { } icon) to browse available outputs.