Workflow orchestrator with AI CLI integration for sysadmin tasks
A developer has built a file-based workflow orchestrator called 'workflow' with a TUI and CLI interface. The tool integrates with AI coding CLIs to generate, update, fix, and refine sysadmin workflows from natural language descriptions.
AI Integration Features
If claude (Claude Code), codex (Codex CLI), or gemini (Gemini CLI) is on your PATH, the tool provides four capabilities:
- Generate — Press 'a' in the TUI, type a description like "check nginx status, restart if down, send Slack alert on failure". The AI generates a multi-step YAML workflow with proper dependencies and error handling. You can review before saving.
- Update — Press 'A' on any existing task. Type instructions like "add retry logic to the upload step" or "parallelize the independent checks". The AI rewrites the YAML while preserving your structure.
- Fix — When a workflow fails, press 'a'. The AI reads the error output, diagnoses the problem, and proposes corrected YAML.
- Refine — At any preview stage, press 'r' to iteratively improve. You can make multiple rounds of improvements like "Add error handling" → preview → "also add logging" → preview → save.
Claude Code Skill
There's also a Claude Code skill included. Install it and you can manage workflows entirely from Claude Code conversations with commands like:
- "Create a workflow for daily database backups."
- "Dry-run the staging deploy."
- "List my overdue tasks."
This makes workflow a building block for agentic automation — AI agents can create, validate, and execute operational tasks through a file-based interface.
Technical Details
The AI integration is tool-agnostic. It auto-detects whichever CLI you have installed. No API keys are configured inside workflow itself — just authenticate your AI CLI tool and it works.
Beyond the AI features, workflow includes:
- 42 bundled sysadmin/Docker/Kubernetes templates
- DAG execution with retries and timeouts
- Overdue reminders
- Shell history import
- Git sync across machines
The tool is MIT licensed and distributed as a single Rust binary. The GitHub repository is available at https://github.com/vchaindz/workflow.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
👀 See Also
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