The hard part of a visual automation tool is not the canvas. It is the first ten minutes, when you have an empty one and a vague idea. You know your Downloads folder is a mess and your meetings keep sliding past. You do not yet know which trigger watches a folder or how a node reads a calendar. Most people close the app there.
Community Flows is our answer to that. It is a catalog of finished flows, built by us and by people who use Watchflows, that lives inside the app. Pick one, press Add, and it lands in your library as a normal flow. You can run it as it is, or open it on the canvas and see exactly how it is wired. Search for "mac automation templates" and this is what you were looking for, except each one is a working file rather than a tutorial.
Already built something worth sharing? Jump to what we accept.
How the catalog works
The catalog ships inside the app. Browsing and adding need no account and no network. A fresh build carries the flows published up to that release, and the next release carries the new ones.
Every flow has its own page. The top says what you are getting in four lines: Runs when, You'll set up, It can and It never. Under that, How it works walks the flow in three or four steps, and See the whole flow shows every node, read only, so you can check it before it touches anything. A flow that runs a script arrives switched off and asks you to confirm before its first run. A flow with no script is ready as soon as you add it.
The Reviewed mark means a flow went through three checks before it was published: a deterministic scan for anything destructive, an AI review that reads the flow and its description, and a person on our side who looked at it and clicked approve. Flows that delete, overwrite or send things are labelled so on their page, and flows that touch none of that say so too.
Here are five we would add to a new Mac today. Two are useful, two are games, and one is there because somebody built it and we are glad they did.
Window Manager Shortcuts
Nine hotkeys that snap the front window to the left or right half, a third, two thirds, full screen, or over to the next display. A small Python script asks macOS how big the display really is and moves the window there. It needs Accessibility, which the page tells you before you add it, and because it runs a script it arrives switched off until you confirm.
It replaces a paid window manager with a flow you can read. Open it and the nine triggers are right there. Change a shortcut, delete the sizes you never use, or add a "top half" of your own.
In Your Face Meeting Reminder
A notification slides past. A full screen card does not. Every minute this flow asks Calendar for the next event, and one minute before it starts, it takes the screen with the title, the time and one button that opens the meeting link if the event has one. Press it and you are in the call. It needs Calendar access and nothing else.
It is seven nodes. The interesting one is the built in script that finds the next meeting, and you can read it from the flow's page before you add anything.
Rush Hour Hopper
Get one frog across the road and the river. Dodge the traffic, ride the logs, fill all five home pads, and the next level is faster. It is full screen, it uses the arrow keys or WASD, P pauses and Escape quits. Three nodes, no script, nothing to set up, works offline.
We put games in the catalog on purpose. A game proves the canvas can hold a real program with a window, a loop and keyboard input, and it is a good way to learn how a flow draws things on screen. It is also fun.
Neon Crawl
A turn based artillery duel across a neon skyline. Set your angle and power, allow for the wind, and knock your rival off the rooftops while the buildings break apart where the shots land. Play the computer or a friend on the same Mac. Run the flow and it opens in its own window. Two nodes.
ISS Commentary
Once an hour this flow fetches where the International Space Station is from the Open Notify API, hands the coordinates to an AI model, and sends you a notification with one or two enthusiastic sentences about what it is flying over. It needs Notifications and an AI provider, which can be the one already on your Mac.
It does nothing you need. That is why it is here. Somebody wanted to know what the station was over, built four nodes, and shared them. A catalog that only held productivity would miss the point of a tool that lets you build whatever you were thinking about.
Share one of yours
Any flow on your canvas can be submitted with Submit in the flow toolbar. You pick a screen name, confirm, and it goes to review. The scan and the AI review run on their own. A person approves it, and it appears in the catalog with the next release of the app, with your name on the card. Submitting needs an activated licence. A trial can build and run flows, but only a licensed copy can publish.
What we accept
The catalog is small on purpose: every flow in it should be something a stranger can add and trust. Here is what we check.
It runs on a fresh Mac. Nothing but Watchflows: no extra tool, library or helper app. Where the flow needs a choice only the person adding it can make, such as a folder, a calendar or an account, put {{NEEDS_INPUT: what to choose}} in that field. Your own paths and names never ship.
It does one thing, all the way. A good flow ends with something you can see: a file moved, a note written, a message sent. If yours stops at a picker or a transform that nothing reads, it needs one more node, and the review will tell you which.
It is different from what is already there. A catalog flow with one setting changed is not a new flow. If you have improved an existing one, tell us which and what changed, and we will look at updating it.
Scripts are allowed, and read line by line. A flow with a script is marked on its page, arrives switched off, and asks before its first run. We host these flows, so we read every script before it goes out. One that downloads and runs code, asks for an admin password, hides what it does or reaches for credentials is blocked, along with the account that sent it.
Paid and third party services are fine, declared. A flow built on Linear, or any service with its own account, is welcome. Its page says so, so nobody is surprised after they press Add.
No secrets, ever. Your providers and keys stay in your Keychain and never upload. A real value in a secret field fails the scan outright. Anything that looks like a key, anywhere in the flow, waits for a person to look.
It is yours to give, and you give it. Submitting a flow places it in the public domain. Anyone can add it, change it and share the change. Your screen name stays on the card, as long as it is a name we would put on a card.
Anyone can report a flow. If a flow does something its page did not say, tell us at support@watchflows.app. A person reads every report, and a flow that should not be in the catalog comes out.
The catalog is also on the web at watchflows.app/community, if you want to see what is there before you open the app.
Open Watchflows, pick Community Flows in the sidebar, and start with one of the five above. Then open it on the canvas. That is where the rest of the app starts to make sense.