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Task Builder — Visual Workflow Editor with MongoDB Persistence

Status: 🟡 In-development Category: Architecture & Design Date: March 3, 2026

Overview​

Introduced a visual Task Builder UI for creating and managing self-service workflows, backed by a new task_configs MongoDB collection. The supervisor agent now reads task configs from MongoDB (with YAML fallback), closing the gap between the UI and the backend.

Problem Statement​

The supervisor agent reads workflows exclusively from task_config.yaml on disk. The UI has no way to create or edit these workflows — any change requires modifying YAML, rebuilding the Helm chart, and redeploying. Non-developer users cannot create custom self-service workflows, and workflows created in the existing Agent Builder are not consumed by the supervisor.

Decision​

AlternativeProsConsDecision
New Task Builder UI + MongoDB collection (chosen)Clean separation from Agent Builder; visual flow editor; MongoDB as single source of truth; supervisor reads directly via pymongoNew collection and API routes to maintainSelected
Extend Agent Builder to write task_config.yamlReuses existing UIConflates two different config models; file-based flow is fragileRejected
YAML editor in UISimple to buildPoor UX for non-developers; still requires understanding YAML syntaxRejected

Solution Architecture​

Data Flow​

First boot:
  task_config.yaml → /api/task-configs/seed → MongoDB (task_configs)

UI editing:
  Task Builder UI → /api/task-configs (CRUD) → MongoDB (task_configs)

Supervisor reads:
  load_task_config() → pymongo (primary, cached 60s) → YAML file (fallback)

Components​

  • MongoDB task_configs collection — Stores workflow definitions with indexes on id (unique), name (unique), category, owner_id, is_system, and created_at.
  • Next.js API routes — /api/task-configs (CRUD) and /api/task-configs/seed (YAML seeding). Auth-protected with ownership/admin checks.
  • Zustand store — task-config-store.ts manages client-side state with auto-seeding on first load.
  • Task Builder UI — @xyflow/react-based visual flow editor at /task-builder with custom TaskStepNode components, property sidebar, and toolbar.
  • Shared pymongo client — ai_platform_engineering/utils/mongodb_client.py singleton with get_task_configs_from_mongodb() returning task_config.yaml-compatible dict format.
  • Modified load_task_config() — Reads from MongoDB when MONGODB_URI is set (with 60s TTL cache), falls back to YAML file.

UX Enhancements (post-initial implementation)​

The following UX improvements were added after the initial Task Builder implementation:

  1. S-curve node layout — Nodes alternate left-right in an S-curve pattern with bezier curved edges instead of a straight vertical line.
  2. Step Templates palette — Left sidebar (StepPalette.tsx) with 154 draggable tool templates from all integrated agents (CAIPE, GitHub, Jira, Webex, ArgoCD, AWS, AI Gateway, Backstage, Slack, PagerDuty, Splunk, Komodor, Confluence), searchable, categorized, with drag-and-drop onto canvas. Data in step-templates.ts.
  3. CAIPE Form Builder — Structured form editor (CaipeFormBuilder.tsx) for caipe subagent steps.
  4. File I/O visualization — Nodes show file read/write badges extracted from llm_prompt; edges between nodes sharing files are highlighted green.
  5. Environment variable panel — EnvVarsPanel.tsx shows env vars referenced in workflow with step locations.
  6. Unsaved changes guard — In-app styled dialog (UnsavedChangesDialog.tsx) when navigating away with unsaved changes; works on Back button AND header tab navigation via Zustand global store (unsaved-changes-store.ts) + GuardedLink wrapper in AppHeader.
  7. Import dialog — ImportDialog.tsx supports loading saved configs from MongoDB, uploading YAML file, or importing from raw HTTP URL.
  8. YAML preview dialog — YamlPreviewDialog.tsx provides syntax-highlighted YAML preview with copy/download, line numbers.
  9. YAML export — Download uses YAML format (js-yaml) instead of JSON.
  10. Workflow templates — WorkflowTemplateDialog.tsx template picker when creating new workflow.
  11. Clone workflow — Clone button on existing workflow cards.
  12. Theme-aware nodes — Nodes use dark vibrant colors in dark mode, pastel colors in light mode via useTheme() runtime detection.
  13. Custom canvas controls — Replaced React Flow default Controls with custom Panel-based controls using primary theme color.
  14. Toolbar redesign — Two-row layout with grouped Import/Preview/Download button bar to prevent overflow.
  15. Scrollbar fix — Transparent track with thin rounded thumb globally.

Configuration​

# MongoDB (required for Task Builder, existing env vars)
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://...
MONGODB_DATABASE=caipe

# YAML seed file path (optional, defaults to /app/task_config.yaml)
TASK_CONFIG_SEED_PATH=/app/task_config.yaml

# Cache TTL for supervisor MongoDB reads (seconds, default 60)
TASK_CONFIG_CACHE_TTL=60

Components Changed​

  • ui/src/types/task-config.ts — TaskConfig, TaskStep types and YAML parsing utilities
  • ui/src/lib/mongodb.ts — Added task_configs collection indexes
  • ui/src/app/api/task-configs/ — CRUD and seed API routes
  • ui/src/store/task-config-store.ts — Zustand store
  • ui/src/store/unsaved-changes-store.ts — Zustand store for unsaved changes guard
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/ — Visual flow editor components
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/StepPalette.tsx — Step Templates palette (154 draggable tool templates)
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/CaipeFormBuilder.tsx — CAIPE Form Builder for structured editing
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/EnvVarsPanel.tsx — Environment variable panel
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/ImportDialog.tsx — Import dialog (MongoDB, YAML upload, HTTP URL)
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/YamlPreviewDialog.tsx — YAML preview dialog
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/UnsavedChangesDialog.tsx — Unsaved changes dialog
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/WorkflowTemplateDialog.tsx — Workflow template picker
  • ui/src/components/task-builder/step-templates.ts — Step template data for all integrated agents
  • ui/src/app/(app)/task-builder/page.tsx — Task Builder page
  • ui/src/components/layout/AppHeader.tsx — Added Task Builder navigation tab, GuardedLink wrapper
  • ai_platform_engineering/utils/mongodb_client.py — Shared pymongo client singleton
  • ai_platform_engineering/multi_agents/platform_engineer/deep_agent_single.py — Modified load_task_config() for MongoDB-first reads
  • Spec: .specify/specs/task-builder.md
  • Task Config YAML: charts/ai-platform-engineering/data/task_config.yaml
  • Existing Agent Builder: ui/src/components/agent-builder/