Guides
Business processes
Write a process as a numbered list, with each step naming who does it:
# Order handling
1. Sales: Receive the order
2. Finance: Is the credit good?
- Yes: go to step 3
- No: go to step 5
3. Warehouse: Pick and pack
4. Warehouse: Ship the order. End.
5. Sales: Tell the customerananke process extract process.md --bpmn process.bpmn| You write | You get |
|---|---|
1. Sales: Receive the order | A task in the Sales lane |
A step ending in ?, with - Yes: go to step 3 beneath it | A decision, with one labelled link for each line |
Go to step 4 at the end of a step | A link to that step, rather than the next one |
End. at the end of a step, or - No: end | An end event |
Each step goes to the next one unless it says otherwise, and the last step ends.
Only what it says
Every lane, task and decision cites its line. If the text doesn’t hold together, Ananke says so and exits with 1, rather than repairing it:
- a step going to one that doesn’t exist;
- a step nothing leads to, or one that can’t reach an end;
- a decision with fewer than two ways out.
Editing it elsewhere
The BPMN is standard 2.0 with a diagram, so tools like Camunda Modeler or bpmn.io can open it. After someone edits it, check it:
ananke process check process.bpmn # IDs, links, reachability
ananke process check process.bpmn --against process.md # does it still say what the document says?A file declaring a DOCTYPE or entities isn’t read, because BPMN doesn’t need them and they can attack a parser.
Nothing runs
The process is never marked executable, and Ananke doesn’t run it. It’s a description to review. To see it as a swimlane diagram, use dev bpmn in Dev Guru.