kdl language

Triggers

A trigger binds a workflow to an external event. Today wflow ships one trigger kind, chord, plus an on-demand mode for workflows you fire from the GUI. Each workflow declares at most one chord inside a single trigger block at the top.

Chord (global hotkey)

A keyboard combo that fires the workflow regardless of which app is focused. The daemon handles binding — it picks the GlobalShortcuts portal on Plasma 6 and GNOME 46+, and falls back to compositor IPC on Hyprland and Sway.

trigger {
    chord "super+alt+f"
}

Modifiers are super, ctrl, alt, shift. Aliases like cmd, win, option normalise on parse, so chords pasted from a Mac keyboard config still work. Key names follow X11 keysyms: Return, Escape, Tab, space, single letters, function keys (F1 through F24), digits, Page_Up / Page_Down, etc.

Chords are global — they fire even if you have a different app focused. If your compositor or another app has already grabbed the same combo, wflow won't see the keypress. Bind a different chord, or unbind the conflict in your compositor first. wflow doctor reports which backend the daemon will use; the daemon's own log (journalctl --user -u wflow-daemon) tells you whether each chord registered.

Window gating with `when`

Add a when sub-block inside trigger to scope the binding to a specific window. The chord still registers globally (Wayland doesn't expose per-window hotkey grabs), but the daemon checks the active window before dispatching the workflow.

trigger {
    chord "super+t"
    when window-class="firefox"
}

trigger {
    chord "ctrl+alt+s"
    when window-title="Slack"
}

Useful when you want to overlay a wflow chord on top of an existing app shortcut without breaking the app's normal use. Both predicates are case-insensitive substring matches. Pick one — window-class matches the Wayland app-id (or X11 WM_CLASS), window-title matches the title bar text.

On-demand (no trigger block)

Omit the trigger block entirely. The workflow doesn't bind to anything; it runs only when you click Run on its card in the GUI, or when you call wflow run <id> from the shell. Useful for workflows you fire occasionally and don't want a chord for, and for workflows where the trigger is "another process kicked it off."

workflow "End-of-week wrap" {
    // No trigger block. Runs from the GUI or CLI only.

    shell "git log --since='1 week ago' --oneline" as=summary
    type "{{summary}}"
}

Limits

One chord per workflow.
Two workflows binding the same chord conflict at daemon startup; the second registration logs a warning and is dropped. Use the GUI's Triggers tab to spot conflicts.
Window gating only checks the active window at fire time. The workflow runs to completion regardless of focus changes during execution.

What's not in 1.0

Hotstrings (text expansion: typing ;sig expands to your signature) parse in the KDL but the daemon doesn't fire them yet. Expect them in a later release once the global keyboard monitor lands.
File-watch and schedule triggers. Cleanly fall out of the daemon shape but aren't a 1.0 priority.

Action kinds →