Read Time: 6 mins. Recommended Ice Cream serving of 3 scoops
Happy Monday, everyone. This week is about testing on real data, logging into servers without passing keys around, and getting rid of the keys you shouldn’t have in the first place.
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Drafts that remember: Test against live’s real data without touching production -
SSH in 3B: Automate that one legacy box, and the key never leaves 3B -
Keyless cloud credentials: No long-lived keys in Stories. (Spoiler: also not 4.) -
Office hours, Oct 29 @ noon ET
The Main Scoop: Your Drafts Finally Remember Things
You’ve been there. You test a change on a draft, everything passes, you push live, and it falls over. Why? Because Finagle’s law and live had 50,000 rows in its database. Your draft had zero. Your tests passed on a ghost town, so Finagle got you.
What changed: 3B drafts can now start with live’s data. If live’s SQLite file holds 50,000 rows, so does your draft. Nothing is actually copied. The draft forks live’s storage, so, in the words of the engineer who built it, “forking 500 GB of files takes the same time as forking 1 MB.” Anything you change stays in the draft and never touches production.
Why it matters: You can now run the scary migration against real data, look at the damage, hit reset data, and try again a minute later. Breaking things is fun when it doesn’t count.
The details:
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3B decides for you. If your request clearly needs the data (“find last week’s duplicate records”), the agent forks it. If it’s unclear, it asks. Humility: now a feature.
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Or do it yourself. Use Copy data from live in the storage browser.
It can also work in reverse, carefully. When you push a new workflow live, 3B can bring your draft’s files along, but only into empty volumes. It never overwrites production.
Read the full story from the engineer who built it
Shipped in 3B
SSH, without handing out the keys.
Every IT team has that one box. The legacy server with no API, a CLI from 2011, and a runbook that starts with “SSH in and run this.” Automating it usually meant a jump host, a shared key in a vault somewhere, and a little prayer.
3B now has an SSH connector. Your workflows can run commands, open shells, and move files over SFTP on any server you point them at.
Why you care: That 2 AM “SSH in and restart the service” task can finally be a workflow, not a person. Technically you could SSH into your smart fridge. Please don’t. Or maybe do? Let me know why you might do that, maybe I can make a shirt for you. Maybe you can run Doom on it?
For the security folks: The private key stays in 3B’s proxy and is never exposed to workflow code. You pin the server’s host key during setup, so if a server presents a different key, the connection fails. Port forwarding, agent forwarding, and X11 are off the table.
Shipped in Tines Stories
Cloud credentials with no keys to lose.
Somewhere in your org there’s a cloud access key that was created in 2021, has admin rights, and nobody remembers who made it. It’s probably fine. (It’s not fine.)
AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Entra, and Oracle Cloud credentials in Stories can now use workload identity federation. Tines signs a short-lived token for each credential, and your cloud provider exchanges it for access. No long-lived keys get stored, anywhere.
Why you care: There’s no key sitting around to leak, rotate, or explain to an auditor, and one less secret for you to worry about.
Setup is guided: Tines walks you through registering the trust with your provider.
PS: For the good of humanity, a reminder: your key, wherever you park it, it should not be 4. This week proved it’s not just a joke. Build a lava lamp wall or something.
Level Up
Read: Inspect your workflow storage to build with confidence
Now that your drafts have real data, you’ll want to see what’s in them. This doc shows you how to browse any volume, preview files, and even open a SQLite database to check your workflow did what you think it did.
Watch: Best practices for configuring role-based access control (RBAC) in Tines 3B (7 and a half mins)
Eoin Magner from Tines walks through setting up access groups that grow with you: viewers, editors, and managers, assigned to spaces and synced from your identity provider. Fewer one-off permissions, fewer “why can I see this?” messages.
Quick Bites
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Backup models for AI Agents in Stories: Add up to five fallback models to any AI Agent action. If your main model hits an outage, rate limit, timeout, or revoked key, Tines tries the next one. Your workflow keeps going while the model provider’s status page turns red.
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Cases search, rebuilt: Full-text search across every part of a case (comments, notes, field values, and more), plus AND/OR filter groups like “priority is high or critical, and status is open.” Finding that one case from last month just got a lot less painful.
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Claude Haiku 5.5 in Stories: Anthropic’s fastest model yet, and about 75% cheaper to run than Haiku 4.5. Built for quick, repetitive work, which describes most of your alert queue.
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Word docs in 3B chat: Create, edit, and read Word documents right in 3B chat. Your quarterly report can’t hide in a .docx anymore.
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Talk to 3B: Press Shift+Option+V to start voice mode. Build workflows out loud, like a wizard. Or someone who’s very tired of typing.
Upcoming Events
Three chances to hang out with us. Two of them are on the same day, so pick one, or be very ambitious and do both.
Builder Connect New York · Thu, Oct 29 · 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM ET · Convene, 810 7th Ave
A full day of talks, demos, and hands-on sessions with Tines Builders and our partners at AWS. Highlights:
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Tines product update: The Product team on the latest launches, with live Q&A
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Builder demos: Three Tines Builders show the workflows running their critical processes
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IT + security, together: A panel on how the two teams can actually collaborate
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Happy hour, 3–5 PM: Beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic options.
Security folks: two sessions are eligible for ISC2 CPE credit. Learning and paperwork, sorted.
Register for Builder Connect New York
Community Office Hour · Thu, Oct 29 · 12:00 – 12:30 PM ET · Online
Thirty minutes to ask us anything about Stories, 3B, or that workflow that almost works. Not in New York? This one’s for you. Also it’s for me. Please come. If you don’t come, I have to make a short video about 3B tips instead. Which is fine, but I only have one video editing style which is late 2000s absurdist videos like Powerthirst. I can make nothing else, I am not sure the brand team will like to see it, but it can’t be helped.
PS: If you skip on purpose to make me make the video, you’re legally required to reply to this post and say so. It’s in the community ToS. Check it out.
Builder Connect Local: Boston · Tue, Nov 10 · 4:00 – 7:00 PM ET · Tines HQ, 99 High St
Come party at our house. There will also be experts sharing wisdom on how to get more time on the golf course, or how to finally beat the water temple in Ocarina of Time.
Legally, I have to mention the wisdom comes first and the party comes after. There also won’t be any golf pros or Nintendo remasters present. Just solid tips on getting your “automation” all the way to automated, and orchestrating your agents so they’re actually productive. That’s what buys you the extra time for the golfing or water temple beating. (I am, however, available for water temple strategy, message me.)
One session is eligible for ISC2 CPE credit, and happy hour runs 6–7 PM.
Register for Builder Connect Boston
Your Turn
What’s the scariest change you’ve ever pushed live without testing it first?
Bonus points if it worked. Extra bonus points if it didn’t and you can tell us how bad it got.
Mine? Glad you asked. If you tried to load Stack Overflow from Madagascar around April 2023 and it never resolved… that’s weird. I had nothing to do with it.
Reply here in the thread, or just reply to this email and it’ll land in the discussion.