Workflows
- Canvas: steps & branches
- Approval nodes
- Timers & delays
- Per-step gating
Orchestration & automation
Orchestrate multi-agent workflows at enterprise scale.
Coordinate agents, actions, and systems into reliable, auditable pipelines — steps, branches, approvals, and timers on a canvas; event-driven automations over your ontology and streams; cron schedules; and a durable job queue with a dead-letter queue. Every step runs through the same governance gates as a single agent run.
Event-driven · scheduled · durable · fail-closed per step
Workflow Builder
automation ▸ steps · branches · approvals · timers
The problem
A single agent is a demo. A reliable pipeline is the product.
Real work spans many agents, tools, approvals, and external systems — triggered by events, run on a clock, and retried when a downstream wobbles. Stitch that together with cron scripts and glue code and you get silent failures, no audit trail, and no way to stop a runaway loop. Cortex makes orchestration a first-class, governed surface: every step is gated, recorded, and replayable, and nothing fails silently.
Every workflow step passes the same gates as a single run — a denied step stops the pipeline, in the ledgerstep → 403 / 409
How it works
Trigger it, run it, prove it.
Compose a pipeline on the canvas, give it triggers (events or a clock), and let the runtime execute it through governed steps onto a durable queue — with every firing, denial, and outcome landing in the Trust Ledger.
- 01
Compose
Build a workflow on the canvas — steps, branches, approval nodes, and timers — or declare an Automation as an event → condition → action rule over ontology objects and streams.
- 02
Trigger
Fire it from the Real-Time Hub on a matching event, on a cron schedule (UTC), from a channel intake (phone/email/voice/web), or from a CSV batch — each one a governed entry point.
- 03
Execute & prove
Steps run on a durable job queue with retries and a DLQ; every step is gated and recorded, so the whole pipeline is auditable and replayable end to end.
Automations over your ontology
Event → condition → action, on the things your business already models.
Automations are ECA rules: when an event fires, evaluate a condition, and take an action — but over governed ontology objects and live streams, not opaque webhooks. Because actions run through Action Fabric and policy-as-code, an automation can propose a payout, but a high-risk one still routes to human approval before it executes.
- Workflows on a canvas — steps, branches, approval nodes, and timers
- Automations as event → condition → action over ontology + streams
- Channel intake from phone, email, voice, and web — every channel a governed trigger
- Batch runner for CSV — apply one governed workflow across thousands of rows
Workflow Builder
automation ▸ steps · branches · approvals · timers
Real-Time Hub · Activator
Watch a stream, react in real time — inside the Trust Layer.
The Real-Time Hub turns the event backbone into a governed trigger surface. Browse a live catalog of every event type the platform emits, declare Activator rules over those streams, and have matches recorded as firings. Set a rule to raise_incident and a firing also opens an ADR security incident — so a watched ActionExecuted becomes an alert your SOC sees, automatically.
- Stream catalog of every eventType with live counts
- Rules: eventType · whenExpr · severity · action (info/warn/critical)
- Firings recorded; raise_incident opens an ADR incident
- Dry-run evaluate any event before you enable the rule
Scheduled triggers
Run agents and workflows on a clock — deterministic, in UTC.
Complement event-driven automation with time-based triggers. A schedule fires an agent, a workflow, or a plain event on a standard 5-field cron cadence, evaluated deterministically in UTC. A fresh schedule never fires retroactively, an invalid expression is rejected 400, and firing recomputes the next run — so the clock side of your pipeline is as predictable as the event side.
- Standard 5-field cron — *, steps, ranges, lists, UTC
- Targets: agent, workflow, or a plain event
- Invalid cron rejected 400; a new schedule never fires retroactively
- tick fires due schedules → emits ScheduledTriggerFired
Prove it — don't just claim it
Reliable means it survives failure.
The hard part of orchestration isn't the happy path — it's what happens when a downstream times out. Cortex runs every step on a durable queue with retry and backoff, and parks exhausted work in a dead-letter queue you can inspect and replay, never lose.
Every way to start a pipeline
Triggers, runners, and durable execution.
Six governed entry points and one reliable execution layer — so however work arrives, it runs through the same gates and lands in the same ledger.
Automations (ECA)
- Event → condition → action
- Over ontology objects
- Over live streams
- Routes through policy
Channel intake
- Phone & voice
- Web forms & chat
- Each a governed trigger
Batch runner (CSV)
- One workflow, many rows
- Bulk governed runs
- Per-row outcome
- Re-runnable
Real-Time Hub
- Activator on streams
- Firings recorded
- raise_incident → ADR
- Dry-run evaluate
Schedules & queue
- Cron (5-field, UTC)
- Durable job queue
- Retry + backoff
- Dead-letter queue (DLQ)
Orchestration runs on the whole runtime
Every step is a governed run.
Workflows and automations don't bypass governance — they compose it. Each step flows through identity, policy, and action approval, and lands in the same tamper-evident ledger as a single agent run.
Action Fabric
- Steps invoke governed actions
- dry-run → propose → execute
- High-risk → approval
Control Tower
- Pause a fleet mid-pipeline
- Disable a tool a step uses
- Live run + spend view
Observability
- Full run trace per step
- Quality scoring
- Event stream feeds Activator
Trust Ledger
- Every firing recorded
- Hash-chained, replayable
- Schedule & incident proof
Security & compliance
Built for the enterprise security review.
Per-step fail-closed gating, server-side tenant isolation, durable execution with a dead-letter queue, and a full audit trail on every trigger and firing — mapped to the frameworks your auditors already use.
SOC 2ISO 27001ISO 42001EU AI ActNIST AI RMFFINRA
Orchestrate agents you can actually trust in production.
Compose multi-agent workflows, trigger them on events or a clock, and run them durably — every step governed, recorded, and replayable.