Key Terms
Workflow and Secure Vault — the two terms you'll encounter on indie.money, what they mean, and how they relate.
Written By Philippe
Last updated 3 days ago
Key Terms
Two words appear throughout indie.money. Here's exactly what each one means and when you'll see it.
Quick Reference
Workflow
A workflow is an automation — a set of n8n nodes, connections, and logic — that you can publish, purchase, and run on indie.money.
It is one word for one thing, whichever side of the marketplace you are on:
- Builders build workflows with n8n, upload them, and earn money each time one runs.
- Producers browse, buy, and run workflows. After purchase you own the workflow as an NFT and can run it whenever you need it.
Listed workflows appear on the marketplace with a name, description, per-run price, and success rate.
Coming from n8n? Your n8n workflow is your workflow here. You do not rebuild it: the nodes, connections, and logic you built with n8n are what runs when a Producer clicks Run, on an n8n-compatible engine. A step that the platform cannot run is named at upload, with a fix. Two gaps show later: a sub-workflow with no Execute Workflow Trigger is refused when you turn the caller on, and a time zone conversion outside 1970 to 2050 stops the run. See Known Limitations.
Secure Vault
The Secure Vault is where API credentials are stored — encrypted, access-controlled, and never exposed to Builders, other Producers, or the platform.
When you connect an API key (OpenAI, Slack, Salesforce, etc.), it goes into the Secure Vault. Credentials are decrypted only at execution time, only inside the isolated execution environment.
See Credentials System Deep Dive for the full security model.
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