u/hack_the_planets

https://youtu.be/ZijVXbPeyCs?si=LHowFcgiKeB1PXj9

Watchflows, https://watchflows.app is the missing visual automation builder for macOS. I'm excited to announce v1.46.0, which lands some cool UX around how you manage your agent and ai nodes in Watchflows.

Watchflows allows you to create n8n like flows, using triggers every mac offers, as well as external triggers via Watchflows Relay and you can use our hosted AI if you don't want to set AI up on your own.

But for those itching to know:

* No accounts Required
* Subscription or One Time purchase options
* Subscriptions include hosted AI usage (using a freshly minted AI key for openrouter, no middle men, we publish the endpoints we hit with each AI provider we support. Subscriptions also include Watchflows Relay, which allows you to trigger flows on your machine from external services like Github or Stripe.
* You can absolutely use the app without any AI at all. Flows can be built fully manually and exclude AI nodes. This keeps the app 100% local.
* No external telemetry that isn't opt in.
* Bring your own LLM via Ollama and inference in your flows is free 😎

Subscriptions start at just $8 / $12 a month, and one time purchase is $49.

To celebrate the launch I created the coupon code below, first 15 checkouts can use this during purchase to get $15 off.

WATCHFLOWSLUVSREDDIT

Thanks for taking a look!

Watchflows (https://watchflows.app) is a automation builder that lets you create visual workflows (like n8n) that react to events happening on your mac. It's all fully local, and no subscriptions are required to use it. It comes with a 14 day free trial and a one time purchase after that if you like it. It does of course ship with a ton of AI native features (while totally optional to use, is part of the magic) and we have subscriptions that include AI usage for your flows and our flow builder or bring your own LLM (local or otherwise, video here shows flow builder doing it's thing, triaging a bug and opening a ticket in linear). Subscriptions also include a public relay so your external webhooks can trigger flows on your mac.

There are a million use cases, and I find it's as fun to build automation (especially with flow builder) as it is to have them happily running in the background. Your creativity is the limit, and Watchflows is adept at coding around it's own limitations (as flow builder to build you a flow that tracks the international space station 🤯). It writes it's own scripts you can use in flow, and hooks into tons of local events your mac already makes available to you, as well as external links via Watchflows Relay.

Happy to answer any questions and welcome any feedback. Thanks for taking a look!

I'm building Watchflows (the visual automation builder w/ ai for macOS).

https://watchflows.app

One of the big issues I have with the app is that we are a bring your own LLM, hyper local app, so we let folks bring whatever LLM they want (including openrouter) to power the Watchflows flow builder and AI nodes. Until now, that's meant paying for a separate open router key (or anthropic / openai api keys, etc...).

I've just added and released the ability to use claude as an AI provider, which uses your pro / max plan usage allotment (claude -p) to power flows and flow building. It feels like a big deal because now there isn't any need to pay for a separate open router key and you can leverage the inference you already pay for with your pro / max accounts.

Have you tried Watchflows yet? If you're a claude user you can now use your claude account to power AI automated flows in Watchflows. I'd love to hear what you build with it, and what you'd like me to include next. Thanks for reading this!

I spent 25 years writing software and automating everything I could. Got tired of my automations being a pile of shell scripts that broke when I looked at them wrong, so I built Watchflows: a native Mac app where you wire up triggers, conditions, actions, and AI nodes on a canvas, fully local, no cloud, no subscriptions. Think make.com or n8n but for local things on your mac.

Honest part, since this is build-in-public: it's shipped and has a handful of paying users (and lots more using free licenses I have given out), and I figured that was the hard mountain. It isn't. Distribution is. How do you find your tribe?

So, one real question: how did you find your first true believers, the folks who became word of mouth instead of one-time downloads? Follow up to that, since this also probably means I have a reason now for an ads budget, how many of you went that route and were initial attempts successful?

Checkout Watchflows → https://watchflows.app
Watchflows Youtube 📺 https://www.youtube.com/@Watchflows

Think n8n or make.com, but locally for your mac. I've gotten a lot of app recommendations from this sub, so it I wanted to share Watchflows with the sub.

Think of it as a visual canvas for automating your Mac. You drop down triggers, conditions, and actions and wire them together. The piece I care most about, AI nodes that can read and transform data as it flows through, and they can run on a local model via Ollama or LM Studio, so a workflow can use AI without anything leaving your machine.

A real one I run every day: when a file lands in Downloads, a local model reads it and files invoices, screenshots, and PDFs into the right folders automatically. No rules to hand-write, the AI just figures out what each file is. The one in the image above wires keyboard shortcuts to a script that manages my window positioning (saving me a raycast subscription that I was using for that purpose).

Details for this crowd:

- Native SwiftUI, not Electron.
- No account, runs offline, 14-day trial with no card.
- $39 one-time for v1, not a subscription.
- Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 13+.

https://watchflows.app

Update:

Thank you all so much for checking out my app, I sincerely appreciate your time and am going to bed having made my first sale, which is a feeling I can not describe. I've got a fresh v1.3.0 coming shortly that adds a Photo Added feature (a request from this post) as well as on device Photo OCR (using built in Mac OCR, it's ok, but I can see room for improvement) as well as some updates to the AI node for better handling of images for vision LLM's. I've given out free v1 licenses to everyone that asked for one here, so I'm gonna crash now and see where things go tomorrow! I may do more license give a ways in the future too, but alas, a guy's gotta feed his family. Thanks again!