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StewAI has three main ideas. Once you understand these, everything else clicks.

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Recipes

A recipe is a reusable workflow template. You build it once, then run it as many times as you want with different inputs. In StewAI, you’ll see recipes in the Cookbook section of the sidebar. Each recipe appears as a card you can click to edit or run. Think of a recipe like a form template — it defines what steps to take and in what order, but doesn’t do anything until you fill it in and hit “go.” Recipes have two states:
  • Draft — You’re still editing. Changes save automatically.
  • Published — Locked and ready for production use. Publishing creates a snapshot so your recipe won’t change unexpectedly.

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Steps

A step is a single action in your recipe. Each step appears as a box on the visual canvas. StewAI offers several categories of steps:
CategoryStepsWhat they do
AIAsk AI, AI Chef, DecisionSend prompts to AI models and get responses
DataInput, Compute, IngestCollect user input, calculate values, load documents
LogicLoop, If GateRepeat actions or branch based on conditions
OutputExport Table, Document, EmailExport spreadsheets, generate docs, send emails
SearchWeb Search, Vector SearchSearch the web or search within documents
Steps connect to each other: when you reference one step’s output in another step’s prompt, StewAI automatically knows to run them in the right order.
Recipe canvas showing three connected steps with arrows indicating execution order

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Runs

A run is what happens when you execute a recipe. Each run is independent — you can run the same recipe many times and each run has its own results. In StewAI, you’ll see runs in the Orders section of the sidebar. Each run shows:
  • A progress indicator — color-coded bar showing how far along the run is
  • Status — Queued (gray), Running (yellow), Completed (green), Failed (red)
  • The recipe name it was created from
When you open a run, you see the canvas with each step color-coded by status. Click any completed step to view its output in the side panel.

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Run statuses

What you seeWhat it means
Gray / QueuedThe run is waiting to start
Yellow / RunningSteps are actively executing
Green / CompletedAll steps finished successfully
Red / FailedSomething went wrong (click the failed step to see the error)
Orange / Waiting for inputA step needs you to type something before the run can continue

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How they fit together

Recipe (template)  →  Run (execution)  →  Results (outputs)
     ↑                     ↑                    ↑
  Cookbook              Orders panel         Side panel
  1. You build a recipe in the Cookbook
  2. You create a run from that recipe (Orders → +)
  3. Each step executes in order, and you view results by clicking on steps

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Next steps