Recipes: chaining steps together

A baker does one job. A recipe (a workflow) chains several jobs together: one baker writes a post, another checks it, a picture oven paints a matching image, and a utensil saves everything to a file. You press Bake ▶ once and watch each step light up with its time and cost.

Steps

A recipe is a set of numbered steps, connected by arrows on the RecipesRecipes canvas. Steps can be bakers, pictures, utensils, decisions, Granny checks, or ways to send the result (such as Telegram). Steps that sit side by side, like 3a and 3b, bake at the same time.

"Explain" turns any recipe into plain sentences, so you can always check what it will do.

Passing results along

Each step can use what earlier steps made. Click Insert a result to add a placeholder such as {{n1.text}}, which means "the text step 1 made". When the recipe bakes, Granny swaps the placeholder for the real text. Leave a field empty to simply pass on the previous step's text.

Forks in the road

A Decide step looks at the text and picks a way to go: "if the review is angry, go left; otherwise, go right". Rules can be simple (contains a word) or a yes/no question answered by the cheapest oven your key can use, for a tiny fraction of a cent.

Granny checks

A Granny check pauses the recipe and waits for you: approve, edit the text, or stop. Put one before anything that leaves your PC, like a message to a customer. A paused recipe keeps waiting even if you close the app.

Baking on a schedule

A recipe can bake by itself on a schedule, for example every weekday at 8:00. Granny keeps the time inside GrannyBakes, so she only bakes while the app runs (the tray icon next to the clock counts). She can't wake a sleeping PC: missed times bake once when it's back, or are skipped, as you choose.

Start from a ready-made recipe in the CookbookCookbook to see how the pieces fit.

Granny's rule of thumb: bake a new recipe by hand a few times before you put it on a schedule.