Build Your First Workflow

Build Your First Workflow 🚀

• Ready to see Scout in action? Let's build your first AI workflow – a creative story generator that turns any prompt into an engaging tale. You'll experience the magic of Scout's drag-and-drop interface while creating something genuinely fun!

🎯 What We're Building

• An AI-powered story generator that takes your ideas and crafts them into creative stories. Give it a prompt like "a robot who loves gardening" and watch it create a unique tale every time!

What you'll learn:

• How workflows and blocks connect
• Key LLM settings: temperature, token limits, and system messages
• Testing and iterating on your creations

📋 Step-by-Step: Your Story Generator

Step 1: Create Your Workflow

1. Sign up for Scout (if you haven't already)
2. Navigate to Workflows in the main menu
3. Click "+ New Workflow"
4. Name it "AI Story Generator"

Step 2: Understand Your Input Block

• Your workflow starts with an Input Block that's already configured with a message field. This is where users will enter their story prompts, no changes needed! Scout workflows always begin with this input foundation.

Step 3: Add an LLM Block

1. Click the "+" button to add a new block
2. Select "LLM Block" from the menu
3. Connect it to your Input Block by dragging the connector
4. Now let's configure the magic...

Step 4: Configure Your Story Generator

• System Message: Your AI's Personality
  • The system message tells your AI how to behave. In the Messages section select System and enter a prompt:

Write a creative and engaging short story based on this idea: {{inputs.message}}

The {{inputs.message}} pulls in whatever the user typed as their story prompt.

Temperature: Control Creativity 🌡️

• What it does: Controls how creative vs. predictable your AI responses are
• Range: 0 (very predictable) to 1 (very creative)
• For stories: Try 0.8 for creative, varied storytelling
• Experiment: Lower for consistent style, higher for more creativity

Token Limit: Story Length 📏

• What it does: Controls how long your generated stories will be
• Rough guide: ~4 characters = 1 token, so 500 tokens ≈ 125 words
• For short stories: Try 800 tokens (≈200 words)
• For longer tales: Try 1500 tokens (≈375 words)

Step 5: Test Your Story Generator

1. Click "Run Workflow" in the top right
2. Enter a creative prompt like:
   • "A dragon who's afraid of flying"
   • "A time traveler stuck in a coffee shop"
   • "A superhero whose power is making perfect sandwiches"

• Watch your AI craft a unique story!

Step 6: Experiment and Iterate 🧪

• Try adjusting your settings:
  • More creative stories: Increase temperature to 1
  • Shorter stories: Reduce tokens to 400
  • Different genres: Update your system message to specify "science fiction" or "fairy tales"

🧠 What Just Happened?

• Input Block: Captured your story idea
• System Message: Gave your AI a storyteller personality
• Temperature: Made responses creative and varied
• Token Limit: Controlled story length
• Prompt Template: Used {{inputs.message}} to incorporate user input

🎉 Congratulations!

You've built a functional AI application that can generate infinite unique stories! You've experienced the core of Scout: connecting blocks with drag-and-drop simplicity while having fine-grained control over AI behavior.