Welcome to the core concepts of SignStack! Understanding these fundamental building blocks is key to unlocking the platform's power. At its heart, SignStack separates the design of a process from its execution.

The Blueprint: Your Reusable Plan 📐

A Blueprint is the static, reusable template for an entire business process. Think of it as the architect's detailed blueprint for a building or a master recipe in a cookbook.

• It's Declarative: A Blueprint is defined as a JSON object. This "manifest" clearly lists all the requirements:

  • The Documents needed (referencing DocTemplates).

  • The participant Roles involved (like "Buyer", "Seller").

  • The required Entities (the data, like "DealInfo").

  • The complete, step-by-step Steps defining the workflow logic (sequence, parallelism, conditions, data mappers).

• It's Reusable: You design a Blueprint once (e.g., "Standard Employee Onboarding") and can then use it to run hundreds or thousands of individual workflows.

• It's Versioned: Like code, Blueprints use semantic versioning (1.0.0, 1.1.0), allowing you to safely evolve your processes over time.

You manage Blueprints using the /blueprints API endpoints or the "Blueprints" section in the SignStack dashboard.

The Workflow: Your Live Instance 🚀

A Workflow is the active, running instance created from a Blueprint. If the Blueprin is the recipe, the Workflow is the specific meal you are currently cooking. Each time you start a process using a Blueprint, you create a new, unique Workflow.

• It's Transactional: A Workflow represents a single, unique transaction (e.g., onboarding Jane Doe).

• It's Stateful: It tracks the current status (e.g., InProgress, Completed) and the progress through the defined Steps.

• It Contains Concrete Data: When a Workflow is created, the abstract Roles from the Blueprint are mapped to specific Participants (people with names and emails), and the Entity Slots are filled with the actual Entity data for that transaction.

• It's Auditable: Every Workflow has a detailed eventLog and a versioned history of its Entity data, creating an immutable record of the entire process.

You manage Workflows using the /workflows API endpoints or the "Workflows" section in the SignStack dashboard.

Blueprint vs. Workflow: The Relationship

The relationship is simple:

1. You design a Blueprint once.

2. You run that Blueprint many times, creating a unique Workflow instance each time with specific data and participants.

Understanding this core separation is fundamental to using SignStack effectively.

➡️ Next: Core Concepts: The Data-First Principle