Real-World Flows

Flows are one of HASH's core features, allowing AI agents to automate pre-defined sequences of actions, performing them on autopilot with a greater degree of robustness and success than traditional robotic process and workflow automation tools (like Zapier, or IFTTT).

Flows can also be used to map and track real-world processes that occur outside of HASH, as well. While we already support creating flows in which HASH agents wait for outside information, user approval, or other external interaction before proceeding, today's update contains specific tools for mapping and tracking real-world processes that occur entirely outside of HASH.

By representing fully-offline processes from across a business within HASH, firms gain the ability to:

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  inspect and improve processes: formally capture and standardize operating procedures and processes within a single platform;

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  track entities moving through processes: centrally view and track physical entities, such as consigments, parts and goods, throughout various stages of a system;

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  augment existing processes with AI: easily insert HASH agents into processes to perform checks on materials as they pass through a system.

New tools for process mapping

New process mapping capabilities in HASH work by extending our existing flows interface to support the general capture of processes in HASH. Individual nodes are now able to represent offline processes, and needn't be linked to AI agents in HASH.

Entities can be viewed according to their current state in a process, and “what-if” scenarios can be simulated to assist in risk identification and process optimization.

Architected around Petri nets

In older versions of HASH's simulation software, we incorporated a Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) editor that supported agent-level simulation modeling of processes. However, while BPMN is an established “standard” for modeling business processes, it lacks the ability to support formal “verification” of the processes it models.

To formally verify a process and assure its soundness, processes (including business processes represented using BPMN) can be transformed into a Petri net. Petri nets, also known as “place/transition” or “PT” nets, are a special kind of graph whose properties enable them to be formally verified. This means that processes represented as Petri nets can be checked for correctness (e.g. the presence of deadlocks or livelocks detected, and the reachability of all states assured). This in turn increases confidence that process models are developed accurately, enabling them to be relied upon with a higher degree of trust, both by people and AI. Because of this, all processes in HASH are stored as Petri nets.

As a user, you don't need to understand the mathematics underlying Petri nets in order to enjoy the benefits they provide. All processes imported into and created within HASH are automatically saved as Petri nets. This includes existing BPMN process models you might have created before in older process mapping software such as Camunda, Flowable, Lucidchart, Microsoft Visio, or Omnigraffle. When you import these, we'll automatically convert them into Petri nets.

This allows us to formally verify the correctness of models (proving their liveness, boundedness, and reachability), providing a superior editing experience in the immediate short-term, and unlocking a whole host of fun AI-related features in the future.