Welcome to Laboratory Notes, where we share what we’re learning as we build better workflow automation tools for JobFlow Pro.
Why a Blog?
We’ve been experimenting with Node-RED plugins and packages for a while now. Along the way, we’ve discovered patterns that work, approaches that don’t, and insights worth sharing. This blog is where those observations go.
What You’ll Find Here
Development Progress We’ll share updates on active experiments: what we’re building, why we’re building it, and what we learned when the first attempt didn’t work.
Community Feedback Print operators and automation technicians use these tools daily. Their observations drive our roadmap. We’ll share what we hear and how we’re responding.
Technical Insights Node-RED development has its quirks. We’ll document solutions to problems we’ve solved so you don’t have to solve them again.
Honest Reflections Not every experiment succeeds. We’ll share what didn’t work and why, because those lessons are often more valuable than success stories.
Current Focus Areas
Right now we’re focused on four main experiments:
- Flow Visualizer: Making message flow visible in real-time
- Message Learner: Auto-discovering available properties in messages
- Palette+: Fixing confusing package management terminology
- Sticky Note: Rich markdown annotations directly on the canvas
Each of these emerged from watching people struggle with JobFlow Pro in specific ways. We’ll dive deeper into each one in upcoming posts.
How to Follow Along
New posts will appear here as we have something worth sharing. No fixed schedule—we write when we have something real to say.
You can also:
- Browse our packages to see what we’re building
- Check the DevKit documentation if you want to build your own tools
- Install experiments from our NPM registry
Thanks for following along.
— The Fiery Lab Team