Pneumatic

What Pneumatic is

Pneumatic is a workflow platform whose core engine is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, sold with a service model on top. The company's site puts two routes side by side. You can open a free cloud account and build workflows yourself, or you can hire the Pneumatic team to scope, customize and deploy a production system for you. It is aimed at businesses that want AI inside their approval and review processes and want to keep the code, the data and the infrastructure under their own control. The pages do not say where the company is based.

What you build and how

The home page describes workflows where AI does the first pass and a person makes the call. It gives three examples, and they show the pattern better than any feature list.

In vendor onboarding, the AI reads a 50-page legal charter and extracts red flags. It scans the document, pulls out key clauses and risk indicators, and presents a structured summary. A compliance officer then reviews the flagged items and approves or escalates, and an audit trail is generated automatically at every step. The page attaches two figures to this example, "2 min vs 2h review" and "100% auditability".

In finance and accounts payable, the AI extracts line items from vendor invoices and matches them against purchase orders and contracts. It auto-approves clean matches. A finance manager only reviews the flagged discrepancies.

In incident response, the AI drafts a step-by-step response plan, an on-call engineer reviews the recommendation, adjusts it if needed and executes it, and the knowledge base updates automatically. The page lists "50% faster MTTR" and "24/7 AI triage" for it.

What these share is a design choice that matters for a buyer in a regulated setting. The machine proposes, a named human decides, and the record of both is kept. The site calls the approach "outcome-oriented implementation" and describes how a project runs in five steps.

1. You talk through your business processes, existing tech stack and AI readiness, and you meet your dedicated implementation lead. The page says this "usually happens within days of reaching out".
2. Scope and architect. The team maps your workflows, identifies automation opportunities and designs the integration architecture, including LLM connectivity (local or cloud-hosted), data sources and human approval points.
3. Build and customize. Using AI-assisted development, the team adapts the Pneumatic core to your requirements, with custom integrations, branded interfaces and workflow logic.
4. Deploy and train. The system goes to your infrastructure, whether on-premise, private cloud or Pneumatic's managed cloud, and your team is trained to operate it on its own.
5. Validate and launch. The team verifies end to end with your stakeholders and confirms each workflow performs as designed before going live.

The company says its engineers use AI-assisted development and the open-source community to deliver custom integrations and workflow logic "3-5x faster than traditional development cycles", and quotes "deep customization in 4-8 weeks, not 6-12 months". Delivery covers "staging environments, version control, backup, and disaster recovery", with service level agreements, and a choice between on-premise and cloud.

After launch, the site promises a success manager who runs monthly system health checks and quarterly performance reviews, and it says continuous improvement "is built into the engagement" and is not sold as an upsell.

The end user of a finished Pneumatic workflow is whoever sits at the approval step: the compliance officer, the finance manager or the on-call engineer above. The pages do not describe the editor itself, such as a canvas or a form builder, so a team that cares about how it feels to design a workflow should try the free cloud account before deciding. The home page also gives no integration list, no template count and no mobile app details.

What the pages state

On licensing, the site is explicit. Under the heading "Open Source and Fully Auditable", an Apache 2.0 License panel says "No vendor lock-in. The code is yours to inspect, fork, and self-host." Another passage says "The core engine is open source under Apache 2.0. No black boxes." and that your security team can "audit every line before deployment". If the relationship ends, it says, the code, the data and the infrastructure stay with you. Further down it lists an open roadmap, MIT-licensed SDKs and the Apache 2.0 license with an "Explore on GitHub" link. A "Full Audit Access" panel says you can pass any due diligence and that your security team gets full access.

On getting started, the site offers two paths. The self-serve path is a "free unlimited cloud account" with no credit card, full product access, the ability to build workflows immediately, self-serve documentation and community support via GitHub. The second path is the professional implementation team, which brings AI-assisted deep customization. The site publishes no price list. It does not give plan tiers, per-user pricing or usage caps, so an implementation project is something you discuss with the company through its Discuss a Project route.

On support, the page publishes response targets for enterprise engagements. For a critical incident it states a response within 4 hours and resolution within 1 business day. High priority carries a response within 8 hours and resolution within 3 business days. A standard request gets a response within 1 business day, and the resolution timeline is agreed based on scope and severity.

The pages do not name a compliance certification and they do not name a hosting region. The claim they make is about auditability and control rather than certification, because the code is open for your own security team to read.

The site also hosts editorial comparison articles, including one on Pipefy against Cflow and one on Process Street against Tallyfy. They are written about other products, so they tell you how the company talks about its market, not what Pneumatic itself does.

Who it suits

Pneumatic suits an organization that runs document-heavy review work, such as legal intake, vendor due diligence, invoice matching or incident handling, and needs an audit trail on every decision. It also suits a team whose security reviewers insist on reading the code, or whose policies require running on its own infrastructure. A developer-led company that wants an escape hatch gets one, because the engine can be forked and self-hosted.

It suits a solo founder with a quick MVP less well. The implementation model assumes a scoping conversation, an architecture step and a build phase, and the company's own timeline is 4-8 weeks for deep customization. If you want to drag together a simple form and an approval chain this afternoon, a self-serve builder will feel faster, and the free cloud account is the only route the pages describe for that. Because the pages do not detail the editor, integration list or pricing, expect to evaluate it hands-on before committing.