Connections and secrets
Workflows use your app accounts through connections, and your own API keys as secrets. Both are encrypted, used by name, and never shown in a workflow or to your AI.
A workflow never holds a password or an API key. It names the account or key it needs, and Lodol supplies it when a step runs. That keeps credentials out of workflows, out of your AI tool's chat, and out of anything you share.
Connections
A connection is your workspace's access to one of your apps, such as your Google account or your Slack workspace. App actions and triggers run through it.
- You connect an app once. When a workflow first uses an app your workspace hasn't connected, its step shows a Connect button. Some apps ask you to sign in; others ask for an API key from the app's own settings, such as a Stripe key from the Stripe dashboard.
- Connections are shared. Members of the workspace use its connections in their workflows, so an app is connected once for everyone.
- AI models use your own key. The AI agent step runs on your connection to an AI provider such as Anthropic, OpenAI or Google Gemini, so the provider bills your account directly. Connect one under Integrations in Lodol.
Your AI tool can't connect apps for you: connecting always happens in Lodol, by someone in your workspace.
Secrets
A secret is a key or password you add yourself, for a service that has no app in Lodol. A Call an API step uses it by name, usually in an Authorization header.
- Secrets are encrypted at rest, and credentials are encrypted in transit.
- Workflows and AI tools see only a secret's name, never its value.
- A secret can belong to the whole workspace or to one workflow. Deleting a workflow keeps its secrets: they're detached from it, not deleted.
An API call can't borrow an app's connection
A Call an API step sends only the secrets you give it. It can't use an app's connection, so calling Google's or Slack's API directly with it won't be signed in. For apps Lodol has, use their actions; keep Call an API for services Lodol doesn't connect to.
Values
Values are named settings your workspace keeps that aren't secret, such as a base URL several workflows share. Steps read them as @values.NAME. Workflows can also save and update values as they run, to remember things between runs.