What is a Smartflow?
Smartflows, powered by FlowAI, transform the way you create Flows in Userflow. Instead of manually building each step, you can simply navigate through your app while the AI observes and records. With Smartflows, you can seamlessly develop thorough, refined Flows of up to 30 steps that incorporate contextual content, appropriate UI patterns, and rich media, significantly reducing the time required to build them. It tracks your actions and quickly generates tailored onboarding flows that match your defined purpose. Smartflow adapts to your actions, aligns with your objectives, and generates a complete Flow, saving you time and effort.
Smartflows are perfect for:
Quick onboarding setup for new features or products.
Feature adoption campaigns to boost engagement with underutilized functionality.
Flow inspiration when you need AI-powered suggestions for effective user guidance.
Key Smartflow Benefits
Build flows in minutes, not hours: Navigate through your product naturally while AI captures every interaction and automatically generates the right steps.
Get professional content instantly: AI generates contextual copy, selects optimal UI patterns (tooltips, modals, speech bubbles), and adds rich media where needed.
Anyone can create flows: No technical expertise required. If you can click through your product, you can create a polished onboarding flow.
Creating a Smartflow
Privacy Assurance and Smartflow Creation
Userflow prioritizes your privacy by ensuring that no personally identifiable information (PII) is shared with OpenAI during the Smartflow creation process. Only screenshots are captured to construct the flow steps, and these are never used to train AI models or any other purposes. To maintain the highest standards of data security, we strongly recommend using non-sensitive, sample data when building your Smartflows—this gives you complete control over what is included. Refer to our Terms of Service for additional details.
Select Flows from the sidebar, then click Create flow.
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Select Smartflow Creator, enter a name for your Smartflow, and describe the purpose.
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Your purpose statement is important!
The purpose statement tells the AI system what the flow does and why users need it. It directly impacts the quality of the flow. Learn more about what makes a great purpose statement and how to make yours a success: Writing effective purpose statements.
Click Create flow with Smartflow AI.
Enter the URL where the flow capture should start and click Start click-through. Next, you will record the process that should be captured in the flow.
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Click through the steps in your app to record the flow. You will see the step count recorded at the bottom of the screen. When you're finished, click Done. Learn more about using the Smartflow creation bar below.
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The Smartflow will display a status message while it creates your flow. You can leave this page while it generates to do other things. Don't worry! We've got you covered—we'll email you to confirm when it's complete.
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Review the details and preview your AI-generated Smartflow to ensure it captured the details as you intended. You can edit the text and steps as you would any other flow.
Tip
Do you want to improve the text or change the length or tone? Use AI Rephrase to improve the text or change the tone and length.
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Publish your flow when ready.
Using the Smartflow creation bar
When you activate Smartflow recording mode, use the Smartflow creation bar to choose options.
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From the Smartflow creation bar, you can:
Track the number of steps recorded.
Pause the recording to navigate to another screen to continue recording.
Not happy with your flow so far? Click Start Over to start again and re-record.
Click Done when you've finished recording or Cancel to discard the recording.
Click the up or down arrow to move the bar to the top or bottom of the screen. (Useful if the bar is blocking an area you need to record.)
When your flow needs more than 30 steps
A Smartflow recording captures up to 30 steps. If the process is longer than that — a long form, a multi-screen setup — you have two options.
Use an Action Flow instead. If the task is form-filling or another repetitive sequence where the user doesn't need to learn the steps, an Action Flow performs it for them rather than guiding them through it, and isn't bound by the recording cap. This is usually the right answer for long form-completion tasks. See Action Flows: what they are and when to use one.
Split it into linked flows. Record the first part as one Smartflow, then record the next as a second. Add a button on the final step of the first with a Start new flow/checklist action pointing at the second. To the user it runs as one continuous experience.
Splitting is often better regardless. Completion rates fall sharply past a handful of steps, so a 60-step guided tour is unlikely to be finished whether or not you can record it in one pass. See Flow best practices.
Two recordings can't be merged into a single flow. What you can do mid-recording is click Pause on the creation bar, navigate elsewhere, and carry on in the same recording.
Why did my recording drop steps? The AI records what it can identify. Steps get missed when an element's class names change between page loads, or when an element hadn't finished rendering as you clicked. Slow-loading screens are the most common cause. Re-record that section more slowly, and check the generated steps before publishing. For elements the recorder struggles with, set the selector manually. See Element inference and dynamic class names.
SmartFlow AI and data privacy
What data does Userflow send to OpenAI when creating a Smartflow?
When you create a Smartflow, Userflow sends a description of the element you've selected (its position, label, and surrounding context) along with your purpose statement to an AI model. This is used to generate the flow steps.
Userflow does not send the content of your users' data, user attributes, or personally identifiable information (PII) to OpenAI during Smartflow creation. Only the structural/UI context needed to generate the flow is included.
For full details on third-party AI processing, see Section 4.4 of the Userflow Terms of Service.
Can I turn off AI features for specific accounts?
Yes. AI features, including Smartflows and the Adoption Agent, can be disabled for specific accounts. Contact Userflow support to request this for your account.
Does Userflow use my content to train AI models?
No. Content you provide to Userflow (including your knowledge base content used to train your Adoption Agent) is not used to train shared AI models. It is used only to generate responses for your agent.