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system · 22 October 2026

Flow: A Configuration-Driven Tool Controller for Robots, Stations and Payloads

Flow is a tool controller I am building from scratch: it owns the state of a whole tool, moves payloads between robots and stations, and drives every device from configuration alone. This post walks through the equipment and software modules, the single native executable and statechart engine, permits and staged transfers, the event-sourced Core, configured recovery, booting the tool, two sample tools, routes and jobs, the deadlock check and timing model, sequences, and Flow UI, along with what went wrong on the way. Flow is still in development, and this post is updated as each milestone lands.

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