What is a workflow on indie.money?

What a workflow is

A workflow here is an n8n workflow — authored in n8n, exported as JSON, and imported to run. It is the same object you already have; this is a place to run it, not a second tool to learn. There is no editor on this side.

Once imported, it runs on demand: anyone can trigger it and pay only for the work that run does. Think of it as a small, self-contained piece of software that takes an input, does a job, and hands back a result — sending a message, enriching a record, generating a report, calling another service, and so on.

Workflows are assembled from building blocks that connect to the tools you already use. There are

around 590 building blocks available, so a workflow can touch a huge range of apps and services.

The three roles

Every workflow on indie.money sits between three roles. The same person can play more than one, but it helps to keep them straight.

Builder

A Builder is the maker. They design the workflow, decide what it should cost, and publish it to the marketplace. Once it's live, they earn every time it runs. See How Builders Earn.

Producer

A Producer acquires a workflow and runs it for their own use. They own their deployed instance — it's theirs to operate, configure, and transfer. See Own and Trust Your Workflow.

Caller

A Caller is whoever actually triggers a run. That might be you clicking a button, an incoming event, or another workflow in a pipeline. The caller pays for the run, and pays only for what that run actually uses. See How Pay-Per-Run Works.

Why it works this way

Most of the time these three roles are the same person: you import your own workflow and you run it. The roles only come apart when a workflow is worth money to someone else — then the Builder is paid, the Producer operates their own instance, and the Caller pays per run. Nobody has to run billing infrastructure, manage subscriptions, or wire up payments by hand.

To see what running a workflow here gets you, start with Why indie.money.