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Flows

A flow runs content files through a sequence of tools, such as AI drafting, source checks and term checks. Flows are a neokapi engine feature, and the sections below cover how they behave inside a Bowrain project. For the streaming pipeline, the full tool catalog and the supported formats, see the neokapi reference:

  • Tool reference: every processing tool and its inputs and outputs.
  • Format reference: every format reader/writer and its configurable parameters.
  • Flows: the streaming-pipeline model.

Flows in a synced project​

In a Bowrain project, a flow reads the source files and streams their blocks through the tools in order. With no -o, it commits the results to the project store as overlays (a process-only run), and kapi merge then writes the target files. Pass -o to write a file directly instead. You then kapi push the changes to the server like any other edit. The flow runs locally and reaches the server only when you push.

Day to day, kapi up runs the project's default flow for you, on the server when the project is connected. Run a named flow yourself for one composition in one pass, without the gate loop.

Built-in flows​

kapi ships a small set of composed flows you can run by name:

FlowDescription
translateDraft with an AI provider
translate-qaAI drafting followed by quality checks
pseudo-translateGenerate pseudo-translations for UI testing
qaRule-based quality checks (whitespace, punctuation, placeholders)
recyclePre-fill targets from content memory
segmentationSplit source text into sentence segments

To list what your installation provides, including tools and formats added by plugins:

kapi flows     # composed flows
kapi tools     # individual tools (flow steps)
kapi formats   # supported formats

Run a flow:

# Standalone (no project)
kapi run translate-qa -i input.html -o output.html --source-lang en --target-lang fr

# In a project, against the recipe's content collections
kapi run translate-qa

Custom flows​

Define a flow as a YAML file in the directory your recipe names with flows_dir: (here flows_dir: flows), composing the tools you need. Step config keys are the tool's own schema keys, in camelCase, as the tool reference lists them; an unrecognized key is ignored.

flows/translate-with-checks.yaml:

name: translate-with-checks
description: AI drafting with quality checks and a term check

steps:
  - tool: translate
    config:
      provider: anthropic
      model: claude-sonnet-5

  - tool: term-check
    config:
      caseSensitive: false

  - tool: qa
    config:
      checkDoubleSpaces: true
      checkPatterns: true
      checkTargetInconsistency: true

Run it with kapi run translate-with-checks. See Custom flows for more compositions, and the tool reference for each step's configurable parameters.

Next steps​