Create Your First Recipe

This walkthrough builds a local workflow that trims leading and trailing whitespace. It has one pure text action, produces a value you can inspect, and does not paste, press keys, write files, call the network, or run another program.

1. Create the local recipe

Open the Recipes window (popup → Recipes), create a new recipe from the library, and open it in the canvas editor. Rename it Trim text.

2. Configure the trigger and treatment

Open the recipe's settings sub-tab in the editor header.

1. Under Identity, use a clear description such as “Trim whitespace from supplied text.”
2. Under Trigger, add a keyboard shortcut or a voice phrase only if you want one. You can leave both empty while learning and use Test run instead.
3. Under Processing, leave Show in Apply menu off for now, and set Workflow output to the non-default alias trimmed_text.
4. Save the workflow settings.

The processing controls also contain LLM and text-to-speech options. This recipe does not need them.

3. Add one text action

Choose + (Add step), open the Text category, and add Trim. Double-click the new node to edit it.

In the Config tab, set the value to {{input}}. This tells the action to transform the text supplied to the test run rather than a hard-coded example.

4. Configure I/O

Open the node's I/O tab.

1. Confirm that the input is {{input}}.
2. Set the output name to the non-default alias trimmed_text. Echo persists this step-output name with the action, and the workflow output configured above refers to it.
3. Check Available Variables. At this first node it contains workflow inputs, not outputs from later nodes.

5. Review permissions and save

Before saving any workflow, review every action in the generated Action Reference. It derives execution status, fields, ports, permission, and runtime-confirmation behavior from the current action contract. Trim is a text transform with no special permission.

Choose Done, then Save in the editor header. Saving the graph and saving Configure are separate operations, so use both when you change both areas.

6. Test without side effects

Choose Test run → One-shot, enter text with spaces around it, and run it. The editor opens the console; select the completed Trim row to inspect its trimmed_text output. Trim does not currently add an input preview to that console row.

Do not make a first recipe that pastes text, synthesizes keystrokes, runs Shell or AppleScript, changes files, or makes HTTP requests. Learn the review and trace surfaces with a pure transform first, then add side effects deliberately with the security guide open.

Next: understand the recipe editor or debug runs step by step.