FlowPilot for Node-RED

Package: @manny-est/node-red-flowpilot

FlowPilot: AI assistance for Node-RED, designed for builders who want help without giving up control.

FlowPilot is an AI-powered development assistant that lives in the Node-RED editor sidebar. It talks to any OpenAI-compatible API (OpenAI, LocalAI, Ollama, etc.) and helps you generate, modify, document, and discuss your flows — without ever acting behind your back.

▶ Watch a full walkthrough (MP4, ~30MB) — first launch, setting a provider, /help, and /demo.

See PROJECT-OVERVIEW.md for how FlowPilot was built and a full rundown of its features, or USER-GUIDE.md for installation, the sidebar UI, and a chapter on every feature.

Design principles

• Reuse Node-RED — built on native capabilities (undo, import, deploy, selection, events) instead of parallel systems.
• User-initiated only — FlowPilot never changes your flow without an explicit request.
• Complete visibility — every proposed change is shown as a diff/review before anything is applied.
• Undo first — every change goes through Node-RED's native undo (Ctrl+Z), including multi-part changes (insertions + rewires + new nodes) as a single step.
• Open architecture — provider-agnostic, OpenAI-compatible REST. No lock-in to one AI platform.
• Simple and lightweight — favors simple, maintainable solutions over speculative complexity.

Privacy & data

FlowPilot sends data to an AI provider only when you trigger a request — nothing happens in the background. When you do, it sends the context you've given it: your selected nodes and their wiring, any debug messages you've attached, and your conversation history.

Before anything is sent, that context is sanitized: editor-internal fields are stripped, and values that look like secrets (credentials, tokens, API keys, auth headers) are redacted. Node-RED's separate credential store is never included. A warning (⚠) appears in the status strip when a selection might still contain sensitive configuration or code, so you can review before sending.

Because your flow contents leave your Node-RED instance when you send a request, a local or private AI provider (LocalAI, Ollama, etc.) is recommended for sensitive or proprietary flows. You choose the provider, and nothing is sent anywhere you didn't configure.

See the User Guide for the full details.

Features

• Chat — a read-only copilot that can see your selected nodes and their connections, with multi-turn conversation memory.
• Generate — describe a flow in plain language and get a new set of nodes + wiring, reviewed and imported on your terms.
• Modify — select existing nodes, describe a change, and review a diff before applying (property changes, rewiring, additions, removals).
• Document — auto-generate a "Read Me" comment node summarizing a selection.
• Review / Suggest / custom intents — ask FlowPilot to critique or suggest improvements to a selection.
• Conversational memory — FlowPilot remembers recent exchanges (configurable depth) and carries that context into Generate/Modify/ Document, with a clear notice when older messages are truncated.
• Clarifying questions — if an instruction is too vague to act on safely, FlowPilot asks ONE question instead of guessing.
• Streaming replies — optional SSE streaming for chat responses.
• /build — describe a goal and FlowPilot plans it, proposes a first flow, then walks an interactive build → deploy → debug → review → fix loop with you, bounded by a configurable iteration cap. Every step still goes through the same diff-review-then-apply flow as Modify.
• Group handling — FlowPilot sees which group a selected node belongs to, and Generate/Build/Modify can create, extend, rename, and ungroup visual groups, not just individual nodes.
• Pop-out window — the full chat/action-bar/status-strip cockpit in a separate browser window, handy for multi-monitor setups.
• Personality slider — an adjustable captain-voice intensity (1-10) for conversational framing; technical content (explanations, diffs, errors) always stays plain regardless of setting.
• /compact / /expand / /disable / /enable — instant, deterministic slash commands for label visibility and enabling/disabling the selected node(s); no AI round-trip.

Requirements

Node-RED 4.x and 5.x, tested. Node.js 16+.

Install

In the Node-RED editor: Menu → Manage palette → Install, search for @manny-est/node-red-flowpilot, and click Install.

Or, from your Node-RED user directory:

cd ~/.node-red
npm install @manny-est/node-red-flowpilot
node-red

Restart Node-RED (or the container) after installing or updating — FlowPilot's editor UI is cached server-side, so a browser refresh alone is not enough.

For a Docker/container setup, install into the mounted Node-RED user directory. If your user directory is /data (or /workspaces/nodered, etc.), this folder should exist:

<node-red-userDir>/node_modules/@manny-est/node-red-flowpilot

Restart the Node-RED container/process after updating the package files directly — the plugin server caches assembled scripts in memory.

FlowPilot stores its own settings and logs separately from the plugin code, under <node-red-userDir>/flowpilot/:

• settings.json — provider configs (including API keys), custom intents, conversation/streaming preferences
• audit.log — a log of every generate/modify/document action
• chats/ — lightweight per-session chat logs
• backups/ — pre-change backups

Provider setup (example: LocalAI)

Open the FlowPilot sidebar, click the settings (gear) icon, and add a provider:

• Provider name: LocalAI (or any label)
• Base URL: http://localhost:8080
• API key: blank unless your instance requires one
• Model: your model name
• Temperature: 0.2

If Node-RED is running in Docker, localhost refers to the Node-RED container, not the Docker host. Use the provider's container name, Docker network alias, or host IP instead, e.g.:

http://localai:8080
http://172.17.0.1:8080

Click Pre-flight check to save and verify connectivity.

Examples

The examples/ folder includes a couple of small starter flows, available from the editor's Import → Examples → FlowPilot menu — see USER-GUIDE.md for what they're for.

Development status

FlowPilot is under active development. Every change is reviewable and undoable, but as with any AI-assisted tool, review proposed changes before applying them — especially on flows you care about.

Feedback

Found a bug or have a feature request? Please open an issue: https://github.com/manny-est/flowpilot/issues