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SciWIn

SciWIn-Studio

SciWIn-Studio is the visual companion to SciWIn-Client: a desktop app for building, inspecting, and running CWL workflows without touching a terminal. It has no CWL parsing or execution logic of its own — it’s a front end over the same sciwin and commonwl crates s4n uses, so nothing behaves differently between the two.

SciWIn-Studio showing a workflow graph of connected tool nodes

The same project, either way

Section titled “The same project, either way”

Every SciWIn-Studio project is an s4n project on disk: a workflow.toml, your CWL files, and a git repository. Open an existing s4n project in Studio and it’s already there, history included; author a tool in Studio and s4n list/s4n execute see exactly what you’d expect from the command line. Nothing needs exporting or converting either way.

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

SciWIn-Studio is currently in testing (beta). Download the installer for your platform from the latest release:

  • macOS — .dmg (separate builds for Apple Silicon and Intel)
  • Windows — .msi or a .exe installer
  • Linux — .AppImage, .deb, or .rpm

Studio’s built-in terminal picks up an installed s4n automatically. If it can’t find one, it’ll tell you and point at the installation guide.

Working with a project

Section titled “Working with a project”
  1. Open a folder. A blank one becomes a new s4n project as soon as you save; an existing one opens exactly as s4n list would report it. SciWIn-Studio with no project open, prompting to open a folder
  2. The file tree on the left mirrors the project’s real files, honoring .gitignore, with CWL documents opening in a syntax- and schema-aware editor. SciWIn-Studio's CWL-aware editor showing a workflow document
  3. Switch to the graph view to see tools as nodes: drag a CWL file from the tree onto the canvas, then connect its ports to another tool’s, or to the workflow’s own inputs and outputs — the same connections s4n connect makes from the command line. The inspector panel exposes per-step settings like scatter and conditional when expressions. SciWIn-Studio's graph canvas with a step selected in the inspector panel
  4. Run the workflow from the canvas, or drop into the integrated terminal to reach for s4n directly, without leaving the app. SciWIn-Studio's integrated terminal open alongside the code editor

Features

Section titled “Features”
  • Graph canvas — tools as connectable nodes, with an inspector for the settings a plain connect/disconnect doesn’t reach: scatter, conditional when expressions, pickValue, and linkMerge.
  • CWL-aware editor — a Monaco-based editor backed by cwl-lsp, the same CWL language server that lives in the commonwl repository, running in-process for autocomplete and diagnostics as you type.
  • Integrated terminal — a real shell in the app, for the moments a graphical action doesn’t cover.
  • File explorer — the project’s actual filesystem tree, .gitignore and all, not a synthetic project view.