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Workflow Engine

A headless workflow automation engine for Laravel. You describe a trigger and a graph of nodes as plain data, store that definition, and run it — synchronously, on a queue, or from the command line. There is no bundled UI: the package is the engine, the node library, an expression language, and an interactive terminal builder.

use Qanna\WorkflowEngine\Facades\Workflow;

Workflow::run('send-welcome-email', ['email' => 'ada@example.com']);

What you get​

  • Trigger-driven execution — Manual, Webhook, Schedule (cron), and Eloquent model-event triggers are built in. See Triggers.
  • A large built-in node library — branching logic, variables, HTTP, Eloquent CRUD, files, and math / text / date / collection / data helpers. See the Node reference.
  • An expression language — {{ trigger.email }}, {{ nodes.list-orders.result.first().total }}, with a set of chainable helper methods. See Context & expressions.
  • Suspend and resume — a workflow can pause on a Wait or a child workflow and continue later without re-running earlier steps. See Suspend & resume.
  • Pluggable storage — file-based (git-friendly) or database-backed, configured independently for workflow definitions and execution records. See Storage.
  • An interactive builder — php artisan workflow:build walks you through constructing a workflow from the terminal. See Building workflows.
  • A fluent schema API for custom nodes, including fields that resolve dynamically from earlier answers. See Extending.
  • First-class testing support — Workflow::fake() plus a full set of assertions that still run the real engine. See Testing.

How a workflow is put together​

A workflow definition has four parts:

PartWhat it is
idA stable string you choose, e.g. send-welcome-email.
trigger{ type, config } — what starts the workflow and with what payload.
nodesA list of { id, type, config } — the steps.
edgesA list of { from, to, branch } — how steps connect, including branch names like true / false.

The engine fires the trigger, and if it decides to proceed, walks the node graph starting from the edge from: 'trigger'. Each node returns a result that becomes available to later nodes as {{ nodes.<id>.* }}.

Start with Installation and the Quickstart.

Requirements​

  • PHP 8.1+
  • Laravel 11, 12, or 13 (illuminate/* ^11 | ^12 | ^13)
  • laravel/prompts (pulled in automatically; used by the interactive builder)

The test suite runs against a PHP 8.2–8.4 × Laravel 11–13 matrix.