What is RondoFlow?

Most "AI workflow" tools wire prompts together. RondoFlow orchestrates real Claude Code agents - so the agents on your canvas can actually read and write files, run commands, and use MCP tools and skills, all governed by safety policies you control. You compose them visually, hit Run, and watch the team execute in real time.

Why it's different

• 🧩 Visual multi-agent canvas - drag agents, skills, safety rules, resources, and MCP connections onto a React Flow board and connect them into a workflow.
• 🤖 Real agents that do things - agents are Claude Code CLI subprocesses, not just chat completions. They edit code, run tools, and stream their work back live.
• 🎯 AI that steers the run - a Director evaluates each step mid-run and decides whether to continue, retry, or conclude; a Planner tunes the team before it starts; an Advisor reviews the result afterward.
• 🔌 Multi-provider - mix Claude Code (local CLI), OpenAI, and Perplexity agents in the same workflow.
• 🔒 Local-first & policy-governed - runs on your machine, talks to your files, and gates risky actions behind a three-layer safety model. Nothing leaves your box except the model API calls you configure.

Table of Contents

• Features
• How It Works
• Documentation
• Configuration
• Development
• Architecture
• Contributing
• Security
• License
• Community & Support

Local development

git clone https://github.com/rondoflow/rondoflow.git
cd rondoflow
npm run setup    # installs deps, generates .env, starts Postgres, migrates + seeds
npm run dev      # opens at http://localhost:3000

Full Docker (everything in containers)

git clone https://github.com/rondoflow/rondoflow.git
cd rondoflow
cp .env.example .env   # edit .env (see Configuration below)
docker compose up      # builds and starts all services

This starts five containers:

Then open http://localhost:3000.

Docker mode needs Docker Desktop only - Node.js is not required on the host.

First run

RondoFlow is invite-only - open self-registration is disabled, and an admin creates all accounts. Set RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_EMAIL and RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_PASSWORD in .env before you run setup; the seed step then bootstraps that first admin (it's skipped if either is blank).

• Option A (local): npm run setup runs the seed for you, so the admin is created automatically.
• Option B (Docker): the rondoflow-migrate container runs migrations only - run the seed step yourself (npm run db:seed, with the admin vars set and Postgres reachable) to create the first admin.

Sign in with that account (email/password). On first sign-in a short onboarding wizard walks you through picking a working directory and a work mode (Quick Start - describe a task and let RondoFlow build the team - or Full Control - assemble agents by hand). Admins can then create accounts for teammates from the Users panel. If the Claude Code CLI isn't detected, the app shows install instructions and waits.

Features

Visual canvas

Drag nodes onto an interactive board and connect them to define how work flows. Everything auto-saves.

Assistants & providers

Each Assistant has a provider, model, personality, skills, memory, and MCP connections - all configurable from the side panel.

The Workflow Generator picks a sensible model per agent automatically - you can always change it.

Smart execution - Planner, Director & Advisor

Three AI helpers reason about your run at different points:

• Planner (before) - reviews the team, models, skills, and order; suggests improvements up front.
• Director (during) - after each step, decides continue / redirect (retry with sharper instructions) / conclude, with a tunable criticism level and learnings it banks for next time.
• Advisor (after) - compares the result against the objective and offers one-click fixes.

Team Discussions

Multiple Assistants brainstorm, review, or debate a topic while an automated Facilitator manages turn order and synthesizes a conclusion.

Workflow generation

Describe a task in plain English and RondoFlow designs a 2–5 agent workflow with personas, models, and skills, laid out as a DAG. Review and edit it before it hits the canvas - or start from a built-in template (Code Review, Content Team, Research, Brainstorm).

Skills

Skills are reusable instruction sets that give Assistants specialized abilities. RondoFlow ships built-in skills (Code Review, Writing Assistant, Data Analysis, API Designer, Test Writer) and you can install more from any Git repository.

Safety first

Three layers of policies - global, per-agent, and per-session - control what agents may do. The most restrictive policy always wins, risky commands require your approval, and budget limits prevent runaway costs. See SECURITY.md for the full model.

Users & roles

RondoFlow runs as a shared team workspace with three global roles: viewer (read-only), editor (create, edit, delete, and run workflows - Director / Planner / Advisor / Discussions included), and admin (everything an editor can do, plus user management and global settings). Accounts are invite-only - admins create users with a starting role from a Users panel and can change roles or deactivate/remove accounts; there is no open self-registration. Roles are enforced server-side on both the REST API and the realtime socket layer (viewers get a read-only canvas - palette hidden, nodes locked), and the UI mirrors those capabilities to hide affordances a role can't use. Admin user-management actions are written to the audit log.

More

Recurring Schedules (cron), iterative Loops (re-run an agent until a goal is met), an in-app Git panel (status, branches, commit, push), Memory that persists facts across runs, external folder mounts, and an audit log + analytics dashboard for monitoring and cost tracking.

How It Works

1. Describe what you need in plain English - or pick a template.
2. Review the AI-generated team of agents with their providers, models, and skills.
3. Run the workflow on the canvas - watch agents execute in real time, with the Director steering between steps.
4. Improve with Advisor analysis and one-click suggestions after each run.

flowchart TD
    A["Describe your task<br/>in plain English"] --> B["Workflow Generator builds<br/>a 2-5 agent team"]
    B --> C["Review and edit on the canvas"]
    C --> D["Planner tunes the team<br/>before the run"]
    D --> E["Run on the canvas"]
    E --> F["Agent runs a step"]
    F --> G{"Director evaluates<br/>the output"}
    G -->|continue| F
    G -->|redirect| F
    G -->|conclude| H["Advisor reviews the run"]
    H --> I(["Apply suggestions and<br/>re-run stronger"])

Documentation

Full documentation lives at docs.rondoflow.app. It's built with Nextra and the source ships in packages/docs - run it locally with:

npm run dev:docs   # http://localhost:3002/docs

Configuration

npm run setup generates a .env automatically. For Docker mode, copy .env.example and set:

• BETTER_AUTH_SECRET - a random string, e.g. openssl rand -hex 32.
• A Claude credential (required for Claude Code agents) - either ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (an Anthropic API key) or CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN from claude setup-token to use your Claude subscription. If both are set, the setup token wins.
• Claude Code telemetry - set CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY, OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER, OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL, and either the direct OTEL values (OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS, OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES) or the source vars they derive from (OTEL_ENDPOINT, AUTH_TOKEN, USER_EMAIL). The server forwards these into spawned Claude Code processes.
• RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_EMAIL / RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_PASSWORD - bootstrap the first admin account. Required to get into a fresh instance, since self-registration is disabled (see First run).

Invite-only. Open self-registration is disabled - an admin creates all accounts. When RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_EMAIL and RONDOFLOW_ADMIN_PASSWORD are both set, the seed step (npm run db:seed, run for you by npm run setup) creates the first admin; leave both blank to skip.

OpenAI and Perplexity API keys are configured in the app's Settings (instance-wide, shared by all agents of that provider).

Email (SMTP)

The Email node sends a workflow's output via SMTP. Configure it with SMTP_* in .env, or at runtime in Settings → Credentials (a DB-stored value overrides .env; SMTP_PASS is stored encrypted). Leave SMTP_HOST blank to disable.

Optional tuning

.env.example also documents optional variables not needed for a basic run:

Development

npm run dev              # start everything (turbo)
npm run dev:ui           # frontend only (port 3000)
npm run dev:server       # backend only (port 3001)
npm run dev:docs         # docs site only (port 3002)
npm run build            # build all packages
npm run lint             # lint all packages
npm run format           # format with Prettier
npm run test             # run all tests (turbo)
npm run test:coverage    # run all tests with coverage
npm run db:migrate       # run database migrations
npm run db:seed          # load sample data (and bootstrap the admin)
npm run db:studio        # visual database browser
npm run docker:up        # start PostgreSQL only (for local dev)
npm run docker:down      # stop containers

Tests: both the server and ui packages use Vitest. npm run test runs the whole suite via the turbo test task; scope to one package with npm test -w @rondoflow/server or npm test -w @rondoflow/ui. The same lint / build / test sequence runs in CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml).

Architecture

A canvas talks to a server over websocket. The server's engine walks your workflow as a DAG, runs each agent through the right provider, and gates risky actions behind the policy layer.

flowchart LR
    User(["You"]) -->|design and run| Canvas["Canvas UI<br/>React Flow"]
    Canvas <-->|Socket.IO live events| Engine

    subgraph Engine["Server: Fastify + Socket.IO"]
        Chain["ChainExecutor<br/>DAG runner"]
        Plan["Planner"]
        Dir["Director"]
        Adv["Advisor"]
        Pol["PolicyResolver<br/>safety rules"]
        Chain --- Plan
        Chain --- Dir
        Chain --- Adv
        Chain --- Pol
    end

    subgraph Runners["Agent runners"]
        CC["Claude Code CLI<br/>subprocess"]
        OAI["OpenAI API"]
        PPX["Perplexity API"]
    end

    Chain --> CC
    Chain --> OAI
    Chain --> PPX
    Engine <-->|Prisma| DB[("PostgreSQL")]
    CC -.->|tools, files, MCP| Host[("Your machine")]

A run streams back live - here's the flow for a single Claude Code agent step:

sequenceDiagram
    actor User
    participant UI as Browser
    participant Server as Server
    participant Agent as Claude Code CLI
    User->>UI: Run workflow
    UI->>Server: Socket.IO chain:execute
    loop each step in the DAG
        Server->>Agent: spawn (no shell) with stream-json output
        Agent-->>Server: stream events - text, tool_use, usage
        Server-->>UI: live text + tool-use cards
        opt risky command
            Server-->>UI: approval request
            UI-->>Server: approve or reject
            Server->>Agent: stdin response
        end
        Agent-->>Server: step complete
        Note over Server: Director decides continue / redirect / conclude
    end
    Server-->>UI: chain complete + token usage

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, code conventions, and the PR process. In short:

# Fork, clone, then:
npm run setup
npm run dev

# Before submitting a PR:
npm run build && npm run lint

Bug reports and feature requests go through the issue templates. By contributing, you agree your work is licensed under the project's MIT license.

Security

RondoFlow runs AI agents that can execute code on your machine, so please review the threat model and deployment guidance in SECURITY.md before exposing it beyond localhost. Found a vulnerability? Report it privately via GitHub's security advisories - please don't open a public issue.

License

MIT © RondoFlow contributors. RondoFlow began as a fork of Orchestra (also MIT) and has diverged substantially since, with the original copyright retained in LICENSE. Third-party dependency licenses are summarized in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Community & Support

Questions, ideas, and show-and-tell go in GitHub Discussions. Found a bug or have a feature request? Open one through the issue templates. For security issues, please use private security advisories rather than a public issue.