Flow Server overview
Flow Server is the private-cloud edition. It runs the same Rust orchestration core as the desktop, but it exposes that core over HTTP so a browser client can drive it remotely instead of through desktop IPC. The engine, adapters, credential custody, node catalog, and data directory are identical. Only the transport differs.
The posture
Section titled “The posture”Flow Server is hosted on your own private cloud instance and reached remotely in a browser. The local-inference model is unchanged. The inference engine is fetched into the instance and the model server runs inside it. Inference is never sent to a third-party model service, so the zero-egress posture holds. Only the compute location and the access path change.
What’s available
Section titled “What’s available”- Server runtime. This is an HTTP and SSE API over the shared application core. It ships as a single binary plus a static SPA directory.
- Browser-delivered workspace shell. The instance serves the same React app the desktop loads, and it routes every command through the generic invoke bridge and the SSE run stream. It reaches full desktop parity except for a few native operations, namely one-click OAuth loopback, dialog-gated imports, and the streaming agentic loop.
- In-instance model runtime. The engine is fetched and the model server runs inside the instance, with streaming downloads driven from the browser.
- Flow-document persistence. Templates, flows, and collections persist to the instance’s data directory over HTTP.
- Remote auth. A bearer-token gate protects the API.
Per-user instance provisioning and lifecycle is a platform and ops concern. The server is deliberately a single binary plus env config. Cross-instance, metadata-only governance services are on the roadmap.
The host facade
Section titled “The host facade”The frontend reaches the API through a host facade. The facade is a runtime seam that routes each call to either desktop IPC or this HTTP/SSE API. All command call sites route through it, so the browser never touches desktop APIs directly. The same abstraction backs the VS Code edition (Flow Code) over its sidecar.