Switchyard

Switchyard is an AI-powered workflow automation platform for software teams. Describe an engineering workflow in natural language, get an editable visual graph, review it, and then execute it deterministically with visible logs.

AI drafts the route; the user still owns every node, connection, credential, and execution.

What Switchyard does

• Builds workflows visually with React Flow.
• Generates editable workflow graphs from natural-language prompts.
• Runs workflows asynchronously with status, timing, node outputs, errors, retries, and live WebSocket events.
• Keeps execution graph snapshots so a completed run always shows exactly what it executed.
• Gives teams workspace-scoped credentials, permissions, invitations, and encrypted secret storage.

Switchyard is intentionally focused on engineers, DevOps, platform teams, and technical startups—not general-purpose marketing, HR, or sales automation.

V1 delivered

Workflow building and execution

• Workflow CRUD, graph validation, autosaving, drafts, duplication, version history, rollback, and reusable templates.
• Manual, scheduled, GitHub pull-request, and generic inbound-webhook triggers.
• Conditions, Switch, Delay, variables, HTTP requests, and branching.
• Chat, Summarize, Classification, Decision, and general AI nodes.
• Execution history, cancellation, explicit retry/recovery, startup reclaim of interrupted runs, idempotency keys, and live logs.

AI and integrations

• OpenRouter is the default provider abstraction.
• Native OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini providers are supported through the same interface.
• GitHub pull-request reads, issue creation, comments, and merges.
• Slack messages, Discord webhook messages, and SMTP email messages.
• Signed GitHub webhooks and signed generic webhooks.

Accounts, security, and storage

• Better Auth signup/login, JWT verification, sessions, and workspace RBAC.
• Viewer, Member, Admin, and Owner roles with membership and invitation rules.
• Encrypted credentials with key rotation; OAuth authorization-code flows store provider token documents through the credential service.
• Local artifact upload, download, and deletion APIs.
• SSRF protection, signed webhook validation, strict CORS, rate limiting, and migration verification.

Frontend and API

• Dashboard, workflow builder, run viewer, settings, invitation flows, and landing page.
• Interactive workflow cards, duplication, version history/restore, template browsing, and save-as-template controls.
• Canonical REST API under /api/v1; /api remains a compatibility alias.
• REST and WebSocket communication between the Next.js frontend and Go API.

Architecture

V1 is a modular monolith:

Next.js + React Flow
        │ REST / WebSocket
        ▼
Go + Chi API
        │
        ├── Auth, workspace, credential, workflow, execution services
        ├── Workflow engine and integration runners
        └── PostgreSQL + local artifact storage

The backend is split into packages rather than deployable microservices. The workflow engine does not know about HTTP, and integrations receive secrets only through the credential service.

V1 boundaries

• Storage is local filesystem in V1; an S3 backend is the next storage adapter.
• Billing and subscriptions are not implemented.
• Azure AI, browser automation, Docker, SSH, Kubernetes, databases, and other large integration families remain future work.
• Kubernetes and microservices are intentionally out of scope for V1.

Local development

Start PostgreSQL, the Go API, and the Next.js dev server together:

docker compose up

Open http://localhost:3007. The API is available at http://localhost:8090 and PostgreSQL at localhost:5434. Stop the stack with docker compose down; add -v when you also want to remove the local data volumes.

To run either app outside Compose, configure DATABASE_URL and SWITCHYARD_CREDENTIAL_KEY for the backend, then run:

cd backend
go run ./cmd/switchyard

Optional OAuth provider settings use SWITCHYARD_OAUTH_* variables, and local artifact files default to ./data/artifacts (override with SWITCHYARD_ARTIFACT_DIR). See CLAUDE.md for the complete architecture and configuration decisions.

Free deployment layout

For a test deployment, use Vercel for the Next.js app, Render for the Go API, and Neon for PostgreSQL. Import render.yaml when creating the Render web service; it sets the backend build command and /healthz health check.

Set these values in Vercel:

• DATABASE_URL — the Neon connection string
• BETTER_AUTH_SECRET — a new random secret
• BETTER_AUTH_URL — the deployed Vercel URL
• NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL — the deployed Render API URL

Set these values in Render:

• DATABASE_URL — the same Neon connection string
• SWITCHYARD_CREDENTIAL_KEY — a versioned base64 AES-256 key
• SWITCHYARD_AUTH_ISSUER — the same deployed Vercel URL
• SWITCHYARD_AUTH_AUDIENCE=switchyard-backend
• SWITCHYARD_ENV=production

Render's free service sleeps when idle and has an ephemeral filesystem, so local artifacts are suitable for testing only. Configure object storage before depending on uploaded artifacts. Its free web services also cannot send SMTP traffic, so the Email node needs a paid backend or an external mail relay that supports an allowed transport.

Verification

cd backend && go test ./... && go vet ./...
cd frontend && pnpm lint && pnpm build