Questions on Declarative Workflow Extensibility, Serialization, and Designer Roadmap

[thumer]

Hello Agent Framework team,

I have a few roadmap and architecture questions regarding declarative workflows and long-term extensibility.

1. Workflow serialization / persistence

• Is there (or will there be) a supported way to serialize a built runtime Workflow instance into a persistent structure (e.g., JSON/YAML)?
• Is round-trip support planned?
• Declarative YAML -> runtime Workflow
• runtime Workflow -> declarative-like JSON/YAML

2. Custom C# executors in declarative workflows

• Is support planned for mapping custom YAML kind values to user-defined C# executors?
• More generally: will there be an official extension mechanism for custom declarative actions/executors?
• Is this on the roadmap? If yes, is there any rough timeline or milestone?

3. Visual workflow designer

• Is a first-party graphical designer for workflows planned?
• If yes, should we expect capabilities comparable to tools like Elsa Studio (visual composition, validation, debugging, import/export)?

Thank you for any guidance. Even high-level roadmap direction would be very helpful for planning.

[moonbox3]

Adding @peibekwe to help answer.

[pjirsa]

@thumer - regarding Declarative YAML -> runtime Workflow
That is how declarative workflows "work" today. You have to write a python script or C# code that loads the YAML file definition and convert it to a Workflow object using the declarative WorkflowFactory class.
Several examples exist in the samples folder under workflows/declarative - StudentTeacher

[thumer]

Thanks @pjirsa for the clarification and the link to the sample.

I just have two quick follow-up questions:

1. Workflow serialization / round-trip
   Is there currently (or planned) any way to serialize a built runtime Workflow instance back into a declarative format (e.g., JSON/YAML)? In other words, support for something like a round-trip:
   YAML → Workflow → YAML/JSON.

2. Visual workflow designer
   Is a first-party graphical workflow designer for composing and debugging workflows currently planned?

Even a high-level roadmap direction would be very helpful. Thanks again!