Watchflows

Watchflows — Visual workflow automation for macOS, with AI built in

Your Mac can handle the repetitive work for you. No code required.

Watchflows is a native macOS app for wiring up automations on an infinite canvas: drag in a trigger, add conditions, actions, and AI steps, connect them, and watch real data flow through the graph. Auto-name your screenshots. Sort your downloads. Summarize PDFs while you sleep.

Built for people who've outgrown Hazel, lived in Shortcuts, or written one too many AppleScripts.

What makes it different

Your files never leave your Mac. Execution is 100% local. No upload, no account, no "trust us with your data." SQLite on disk, credentials in the Keychain. The work happens where your stuff lives.

AI that does actual jobs, not chat. AI nodes read (pull the amount out of an invoice), understand (decide if an alert needs you now), summarize (turn a transcript into 5 bullets), and classify (sort screenshots into Code / Receipts / Memes). Structured JSON output with schema validation, so downstream nodes get real data — not a paragraph you have to parse.

Bring your own model — including local ones. 10 providers supported: Ollama, LM Studio, Apple Intelligence (on-device), OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, plus your Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions via their CLIs. Never pay us for AI if you don't want to.

Describe it and it builds it. Flow Builder turns "watch my Downloads folder and unzip anything that lands there" into a working canvas you can inspect and debug.

Features

• 60+ built-in nodes across triggers, actions, AI, Apple apps, files, transformers, conditions, and utilities
• Real triggers: folder watching, schedules (interval or calendar), webhooks, Bluetooth proximity, photos, hotkeys
• Deep macOS integration: Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Mail, Finder, Shortcuts, shell scripts, notifications
• Agent node — a sandboxed tool loop with iteration and token budgets and a file-access scope you control
• MCP server built in, so Claude or any MCP client can list and run your flows
• Forms for human-in-the-loop steps
• Community Flows — browse and install automations other people built
• Run history with per-node payload inspection, so you can see exactly what data moved and where it broke

Pricing

• $49 one-time — the whole app, forever, all v1 updates included. Bring your own AI keys or run local models and never pay again.
• $12/mo Standard · $20/mo Pro — optional Watchflows Cloud: hosted AI with zero setup, plus a public webhook relay (no port forwarding).
• 14-day free trial. No signup, no credit card.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Local-first, account-free, LLM-native.

👉 watchflows.app · Docs · Pricing