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Curriculum/AI Agents/Low-Code Agents/Flowise: Self-Hosted Open-Source Agent Platform
60 minIntermediate

Flowise: Self-Hosted Open-Source Agent Platform

After this lesson, you will be able to: Deploy Flowise locally, build a document Q&A agent, and expose it via REST API or an embeddable chat widget.

Flowise is LangFlow's friendlier cousin: Node.js-based, faster to install, with a polished UX and one-click chat widget embed. This lesson deploys Flowise, builds a doc Q&A agent, and embeds it in a real webpage.

Prerequisites:LangFlow: Visual LangChain Workflow Builder

Install Flowise

  1. 1

    1. Make sure Node.js 18+ is installed.

  2. 2

    2. Run: `npx flowise start`.

  3. 3

    3. Open http://localhost:3000.

  4. 4

    4. (Optional) Set FLOWISE_USERNAME and FLOWISE_PASSWORD env vars to add basic auth.

Chatflows vs. Agentflows

Chatflow, a single LangChain chain (e.g., conversational RAG, summarizer). Agentflow, a multi-step agent with tool use, branching, and conditionals. Pick Chatflow for retrieval Q&A; Agentflow when you need real tool-calling reasoning.

Build a document Q&A chatflow

  1. 1

    1. Click '+ Add New' → 'Chatflow' → blank canvas.

  2. 2

    2. Add 'Conversational Retrieval QA Chain'.

  3. 3

    3. Add 'ChatOpenAI' (or 'ChatAnthropic'). Add API key as a credential.

  4. 4

    4. Add 'In-Memory Vector Store'. Connect to a 'Recursive Character Text Splitter' and a 'PDF File Loader'.

  5. 5

    5. Connect 'OpenAI Embeddings' to the vector store.

  6. 6

    6. Upload your PDF in the loader's settings.

  7. 7

    7. Click 'Save Chatflow'. Test in the right-panel chat.

💡 Embed in a real page

Click 'Embed' (top-right of the chatflow). Flowise gives you a `<script>` snippet. Paste into any HTML file, open in a browser, your agent is now a chat widget on a real webpage.

Your webpage
↓
Chat bubble
sits in the lower-right corner
↓
Flowise widget opens
The embed is one script tag. Visitors click the bubble and your Flowise chatflow opens in place.

Expose via REST API

  1. 1

    1. Click 'API Endpoint'. Flowise shows you a curl-ready endpoint.

  2. 2

    2. POST to it with `{ "question": "..." }`.

  3. 3

    3. Use this in your own apps, the agent is now a queryable API.

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←LangFlow: Visual LangChain Workflow Builder
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