From intent to primitives Say what you want in plain language; this table tells you which Swirls primitives build it.
Every Swirls system is a handful of primitives wired together. This page maps common intents to the primitives that express them. It works in both directions: humans use it to find the right blocks, and agents use it to turn a natural-language request into a .swirls file.
You want Primitives A step that requires judgment, not exact rules agent + an agent node in the workflowChat with an AI that can use our procedures agent with workflows as toolsThe agent answers in Slack or Linear agent + channel + connection A chat assistant on our own website agent + web channel , see Embed agent chat Give the agent your playbooks and domain knowledge skill + agent skills:Give the agent tools from a remote MCP server mcp + agent mcp:Talk to a Swirls agent from an external assistant MCP channel with agent: and a connectorRestrict what tools the agent uses for routine work agent profile (agents ) Let an agent delegate subtasks agent team (agents )
You want Primitives Save what a workflow produced and reuse it stream See stream data as a spreadsheet, or add a per-row computed column view Shared files between workflows and agents disk Read or write our existing database postgres + postgres nodesProvision a relational database instead of running one ourselves database block + a type: database node to read or write itBackfill or transform data after a schema change migration block on the managed databaseGive an agent a workspace it can explore disk
You want Primitives Call an API with a key we hold secret + credential profile (auth block) + http nodePost to Slack, Linear, Discord, LinkedIn, or Microsoft without managing keys connection + http nodeCall a provider API operation with typed inputs and outputs action + integration node (node types )Send email from a workflow email node (node types )Scrape a web page scrape node (node types )Discover URLs from a search query search node (node types )Research the web with AI (multi-query search, URL extraction, entity discovery) parallel node — Parallel.ai API (node types )Validate inputs and outputs between steps schema
You want Primitives Only finance can use the bookkeeping agent role + policy Map our org chart onto the system role per group + policy grantsThe execs can invoke every agent allow exec -> agent * in a policy ; direct MCP workflow access requires separate workflow grantsOnly one customer's credential can run a published workflow Admin-assigned credential attributes + a matching role and direct workflow grant Our workloads call a project using identities from our own provider OIDC federation + role mapping Protect a public form with a password type: basic credential profile on the form Verify webhook calls with a shared secret webhook secret: + header: (resources )
You want Primitives A workspace over the system: chat with the agent, see the data, kick off runs appShow a view as a report without building a frontend appview in an OpenUI pageLet a client's team chat with an agent without the dashboard's operator tooling appchannel { platform: swirls } on a channel: pageBuild a React app, Node.js service, API, or custom MCP server Your application calls the Swirls SDK; an app block is optional
"When a customer submits the contact form, summarize it with AI, post it to the sales Slack, and keep a record. Only the sales team can run the follow-up workflow manually."