Your flows: a canvas has a role¶
A ZettelFlow canvas is not just a file: it has a role, and the role is how you launch it, what its steps can be configured with, and where the gallery puts a system when it installs one.
| Role | Where it lives | How it runs |
|---|---|---|
| Creates notes | the new notes canvas setting | the ribbon icon and the create command |
| Edits the open note | the editor canvas setting | the edit command, at your cursor |
| Runs on a folder | a canvas under the folder-flows folder, named after the folder | creating a note in that folder |
| Runs on an event | a canvas under the events folder | a vault event, through its first step's trigger |
| Runs from a hook | a canvas under the hooks folder | a property hook |
| No role | anywhere else | only the run a flow command |
Settings → Your flows lists every canvas that has one, and is where you change them.
The role is derived, never stored¶
Nothing is written into your .canvas file. The role is read from the settings and the folders you already have — one pure function, flowRole(path, folders), which four different places used to re-derive by hand and had already drifted apart: one forgot the hooks folder, another the editor canvas, and all of them matched folders with a plain startsWith, so _ZettelFlow/folders2 looked like it was inside _ZettelFlow/folders.
Precedence is stated rather than incidental: a canvas you named by hand (create, edit) keeps that role even if it also sits in one of the folders.
Changing a role always says what it costs¶
Two of the roles are exclusive — one canvas at a time — and two of them are places, so taking one moves the file:
- giving creates notes to another canvas names the one that stops holding it, which keeps existing as a file;
- giving runs on an event moves the canvas into the events folder;
- giving runs on a folder asks which folder, because a folder flow is found by its name.
Every one of those is shown before it happens and applied by a second, explicit click. The move goes through Obsidian's FileManager, so links to the canvas follow it.
The events folder¶
Event flows have their own home, separate from the folder flows. They used to share one, which made a canvas two things at once: the automation of a folder (by its filename) and an event flow (if its first step happened to carry a trigger).
The two folders may be neither the same nor inside one another — the setting refuses a value that collides and says which folder it collided with, keeping the previous one.