Roadmap for custom/spoke actions and subflow invocation in Flow API?

[IhorKochetkov]

Context

We've been testing the Flow API extensively (SDK 4.5.0, Zurich instance, IDE 3.3.1) and are very impressed with the core capabilities. We've successfully deployed flows with:

• Record and Service Catalog triggers
• action.core.* actions (lookUpRecord, updateRecord, askForApproval, log, etc.)
• IF/ELSE/forEach flow logic with data pills
• TemplateValue, approvalRules
• Global scope deployment

What we've discovered

We found that wfa.action() has a string overload that accepts an action type sys_id instead of an action.core.* reference:

// Typed core action
wfa.action(action.core.lookUpRecord, { $id: Now.ID['lookup'] }, { table: 'sys_user', ... })

// String sys_id — compiles and deploys, but untested rendering
wfa.action('5b1703af87f055107701ed3e0ebb3580', { $id: Now.ID['ad_lookup'] }, { user_name: '...'})

This suggests spoke/custom action support is on the horizon.

Questions

1. Custom/spoke actions: Is there a planned approach for calling Integration Hub spoke actions (e.g., Microsoft AD, Slack, custom spokes) from Fluent flows? Will now-sdk dependencies eventually generate types for installed spoke actions, similar to how it generates table types?

2. Subflow invocation: The 4.3.0 release notes listed "subflow invocation" as not yet supported. Is this still planned? Will we be able to call existing subflows from a Flow and map inputs/outputs with type safety?

3. Custom action definitions: Will we be able to define custom Flow Designer actions (spoke actions) via Fluent, or is this out of scope?

4. Flow publishing / IDE compatibility: We noticed that getCatalogVariables and createCatalogTask (added in 4.4.0) cause "Corrupted flow" in Flow Designer UI when the wfa_fluent/activate_flows endpoint isn't available. The auto-publish from 4.5.0 returns "Flow activation endpoint not found" even with IDE 3.3.1 installed on Zurich. Is there a minimum IDE version required for the catalog actions to work correctly?

Our use case

We're building AI-assisted flow creation tooling (Claude + Fluent MCP + SDK) for our internal team. The core action set works great, but most of our production flows use spoke actions (AD lookups, Slack notifications, custom integrations) and subflow calls. Understanding the roadmap would help us plan our approach.

Thanks for the excellent work on the Flow API — it's a game changer for pro-code ServiceNow development.

[praneeth-gurramkondu]

Thanks for sharing the feedback
We are filling this gap in May and June releases
Custom action definitions, calling subflows and custom actions in flows
Referring custom/ spoke actions is possible via now-sdk dependencies
Minimum IDE version required for auto-publish is 4.4.1

[IhorKochetkov]

sounds amazing! Thanks for the quick reply!