Start Step
Every Spell begins with a single Start step. This step is special - there can only be one, and you can’t delete it (what good would a spell be if it can’t start?).
Flow Steps
Your first few Spells will probably be quite simple. You’ll likely create a “chain” of steps, one right after the other. Like this:

Tool Steps
Workflows can be thought of as a flow of information: data comes in, you change it up, and you put it somewhere else. Because we’re automating workflows, we’re going to need tools that can fetch, update, and transform data. Tool Steps are built-in Respell steps to help you work with data. There’s a few categories:- Text Tools
- File Tools
- Web & Code Tools
Text Tools
Text tools help you work with text data. These are the most common steps in most Spells, as most business workflows are text-based. Here is a preview of text tools:
You can dive deeper into our Text Tools in our Steps Reference.
File Tools
File tools help you work with files. Files are particularly annoying to work with, as you usually have to download them or use various online tools. We provide several tools out of the box:
- Documents: pdf, docx, and other text-based files
- Spreadsheets: csv, xlsx, and other tabular data files
- Audio: mp4, wav, and other audio files
- Image: png, jpg, and other image files
- Video: wav, mp4, avi, and other video files
You can dive deeper into our File Tools in our Steps Reference.
Web & Code Tools
Sometimes the data you’re looking for isn’t available when your Spell starts. Web & Code tools are built to query and transform data from search engines and external systems.
Web Tools
Let’s say you want to research a new user that placed an order on your website, and you’re trying to figure out who they are and whether you should reach out to build a relationship. Web tools are useful for obtaining information from websites and search engines. Instead of loading up Google and sifting through 5 irrelevant sponsored results, use the Research Agent or Search Google to find websites matching your query. When you find a website, use Read Website to fetch all the text on the page to pass to the next step.You can dive deeper into our Web Tools in our Steps Reference.
Code Tools
You may also need a bit more power in your workflow; you need to write some code, query your database, or call an API for an integration we don’t offer. We give you the primitives with code tools. Code tools aren’t just for developers, either. If you’re non-technical, you can ask AI to write the code, query, or API request for you.You can dive deeper into our Code Tools in our Steps Reference.
Integration Steps
Beyond just starting Spells and transforming the data, you also want your workflows to use your tools. Oftentimes, you’ll want to update data in an external system, like a CRM or an ATS. Or you may want to fire off an action, like send a Slack message or an email. Integration steps connect to the apps you use to get you the data you need and keep your systems up to date.
You can see our list of available integrations in our Integrations Reference.
Example
Let’s put it all together. Here’s a Trigger Spell that:- Receives a new contact from HubSpot (CRM)
- Researches the contact on the web using the Research Agent
- Uses AI to determine if the contact should get a personalized reach-out
- Branches to 2 different actions based on that decision:
- If so, sends a Slack alert to the sales team
- If not, sends an AI-generated welcome email

You can use this Spell as a template here: (TODO)