Quickstart

This quickstart guides you to your first “hello world” moment in SuperPlane: creating an app, building a small workflow on its canvas, running it, and inspecting the resulting run and payloads.

You won’t need to connect any third-party services.

What you’ll build

A tiny workflow that:

• starts from a Manual Run
• fetches a random cat fact via HTTP Request
• branches with If (True/False output channels) based on the length of the cat fact
• ends with one of the No Operation nodes

Along the way you’ll learn the core mental model: nodes emit payloads, downstream nodes subscribe, and payloads accumulate into a message chain you can reference in expressions.

Prerequisites

• You can access the SuperPlane UI.
• You have an organization where you can create apps.

Your first workflow (step-by-step)

1) Create an app

Create a new app and name it Hello world. This opens the canvas where you build your workflow.

2) Add the trigger: Manual Run

1. Click Edit to enter edit mode.
2. Click ”+ Components”.
3. Add Manual Run to the canvas.

When you drop it on the canvas, it will typically show up as a start node with a Run button. This is the trigger that will start the workflow.

3) Add an action: HTTP Request

1. Add HTTP Request to the canvas.
2. Connect Manual Run → HTTP Request by dragging from the output channel.
3. Name the node Get cat fact.

Configure the HTTP Request:

• Method: GET
• URL: https://catfact.ninja/fact
• Click Save button at the bottom of the configuration panel.

Next, commit your changes and click Run on the manual trigger node to run the first HTTP request. Further nodes will use the response from this run to help us write expressions.

This endpoint will fetch a random cat fact and return JSON like:

{
  "fact": "A cat will tremble or shiver when it is in extreme pain.",
  "length": 56
}

4) Add branching: If

1. Add If to the canvas.
2. Connect HTTP Request → If.

For illustration purposes we will determine whether the cat fact can fit in an old-school tweet or not.

Set the If expression to branch based on the API response. The If field is a condition - write it without {{ }}:

$['Get cat fact'].data.body.length <= 160

As you type the expression, you’ll see that SuperPlane will provide you with a list of possible data attributes to choose from via autocompletion.

5) End both paths safely: No Operation

Add two No Operation nodes:

• Connect If / True → No Operation and name it fact is short.
• Connect If / False → No Operation and name it fact is long.

This keeps the tutorial completely safe: the workflow does real work (an HTTP call), but has no external side effects.

6) Commit and run

1. Click Commit to make your changes live.
2. Click the Manual Run node.
3. Click Run.

Run it a couple more times. You should see nodes update with statuses as each run finishes.

Successfully running the workflow should look like this:

Inspect a run (payloads, history, message chain)

You can inspect exactly what happened and what data flowed between nodes.

1) Open a run

1. Open the Runs sidebar from the canvas header.
2. Click the most recent run to select it.

The canvas highlights the path the run took. The sidebar shows every node that executed, with its result.

2) Inspect a node

Click on any node in the run — either in the sidebar or directly on the canvas. A bottom panel opens with three tabs:

• Details — execution summary: status, timestamps, and result.
• Payload — the data this node emitted. For your Get cat fact node, look for data.body.fact and data.body.length.
• Config — the node’s resolved settings at execution time.

3) Understand the message chain

Each node’s output is added to a message chain. Reference upstream data with $['Node Name'].field. See Expressions.

For a deeper explanation, see Data Flow and Expressions.

Troubleshooting

• HTTP Request fails: Open the HTTP Request run item payload and check data.status and data.error. Public APIs sometimes rate-limit; re-run after a minute if needed.
• A node didn’t run: Verify the subscription lines on the canvas (Manual Run → HTTP Request → If), and ensure the No Operation nodes are connected to the correct If output channels.

Next steps

The hello world was not exactly a DevOps workflow, but it covered the fundamentals: apps, canvases, nodes, runs, and payloads.

Browse example apps for real-world workflows you can install and adapt.