Runtype
Getting Started

Quickstart: From flow to live surface

This quickstart guide walks you through creating your first AI workflow and deploying it as a live API endpoint. You'll transform website content into social media content in under 10 minutes.

New to Flows, Products, or surfaces? Learn the basics: What are flows? | What are products? | What are surfaces?

What you'll build

A Flow that converts website content into ready-to-publish social media posts for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, exposed as a REST API you can call from any application.

Before you begin: You'll need a Runtype account. Create one if you haven't already.

Step 1: Create a Flow

You'll build a Flow with two steps: one to fetch the website content, another to transform it into social posts.

  1. From the dashboard, click Flows in the sidebar

  2. Click + Create Flow

  3. Click Start from scratch

  4. Click the + button to add your first step

  5. Select Fetch URL (learn more about built-in tools)

  6. Configure the Fetch to use "Firecrawl (Web Scraping)"

  7. Type in this variable under from URL: {{website}}

  8. Click the + button to add a new step and select Run task (a prompt step — see creating and editing Flows)

  9. Paste the prompt text in the User instructions:

Here is website content:

{{fetch_result}}

Generate three social media posts for this article. Return a JSON object with these keys: "twitter" (under 280 characters), "linkedin" (2-3 paragraphs, professional tone), and "instagram" (casual, with emoji suggestions).

  1. Name your Flow: Website Content to Social Media Content

  2. Click Create

Step 2: Test your Flow

Before deploying, verify your Flow works as expected. Learn more about debugging Flows.

  1. Click the Run button on your Flow

  2. Enter a Value (e.g. https://runtype.com) next to the Field Name titled "website"

  3. Click Run Flow

  4. Review the JSON response to confirm you're getting posts for all three social media platforms

Step 3: Create a Product

Products group your Flows and Agents for deployment. Learn more about creating Products.

  1. Click Products in the sidebar

  2. Click + New Product

  3. Click REST API as your surface

  4. Provide a name for your new Product (e.g. "Content Repurposer")

  5. Click Use Existing, followed by Flows

  6. Select the Flow you created earlier: "Website Content to Social Media Content"

  7. Click Create REST API

Runtype will then create your new Product with the selected Flow as your Capability (learn more about Capabilities and API Surfaces) and the REST API as your Surface.

Step 4: Call your endpoint

Use the endpoint URL and API key to make your first request. Learn more about calling API endpoints or see setting up an API Surface for configuration options.

Step 5: Success

Your API is now live! You can call this endpoint from any application to convert articles into social media content.

Next steps

Now that you've built and deployed your first Flow to Surface as a Product, explore these topics:

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