How Stepladder works
For people using Stepladder with an AI assistant, and for directory reviewers. Updated 2 October 2026.
Stepladder puts a plan with steps and waits on your phone. You ask your AI assistant for something with timing in it — a bread bake, a course of pills, a cleaning routine, “remind me to check the oven in 40 minutes” — and the assistant writes it as a workflow through Stepladder's connector. The Stepladder app then shows you the step you are on, rings when a wait is over, and takes your answers. The assistant can follow what you did and adjust the plan when you ask it to.
What you need
- The Stepladder app on an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, signed in with Apple or Google. It is in testing: on iPhone and iPad through TestFlight, on Android by invitation.
- An AI assistant that supports connectors (also called custom connectors,
apps or MCP servers), such as Claude. The connector's address is
https://stepladderapp.com/mcp. - To sign in to Stepladder when the assistant first connects, with the same Apple or Google account as the app. That is how your workflows reach your phone. There is no separate Stepladder password.
Connect your assistant walks through adding the connector to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, step by step.
What a workflow is
A workflow is a list of steps that happen in order, the way a recipe reads. There are five kinds:
- Task — something you do, such as “Fold the dough”. You tap Finished when it is done.
- Question — something you answer: yes or no, a choice, a number or text.
- Wait — a rest of a set length, or until a time of day. The phone rings when it is over.
- Branch — one set of steps or another, depending on an answer.
- Repeat — a set of steps done a number of times, or until an answer says stop.
Once created, a workflow's steps do not change. You, or your assistant on your word, can pause it, give a wait more or less time, go back a step or move on early. To change the steps themselves, the assistant cancels it and creates another.
When the phone rings
- When a wait is over. If the step after it has a line to say, you hear it in the alarm.
- Once, when a task you started has run well past its time, in case you forgot to tap Finished.
A task or a question never rings when it appears. A workflow nobody tends is set aside (suspended) rather than ringing for ever; you choose Resume or Abort in the app, or tell your assistant.
The connector's tools
When you connect, Stepladder's sign-in page says what the assistant will be able to do before you choose Allow. Every connection gets the first eight tools. The rest are offered only to a connection you allowed to control your workflows; with them the assistant passes on what you told it you did or said, never its own judgement.
Every connection
| Tool | What it does | Kind |
|---|---|---|
workflow_language | Reads the reference for writing a workflow, so the assistant writes one the service accepts. | Read |
whoami | Reads which Stepladder person this connection acts for. | Read |
create_workflow | Checks a workflow and, if it is valid, starts it on your phone. An invalid one is refused with what to fix. | Write |
get_workflow | Reads one workflow: its steps, where it stands, when the current wait ends, your answers. | Read |
list_workflows | Finds your workflows, by words in their description or by status. | Read |
follow_workflow | Reads what happened in a workflow since the assistant last looked: steps finished, answers given, waits over. | Read |
get_queue | Reads what is in front of you now, across all your workflows. | Read |
cancel_workflow | Stops a workflow for good; nothing more of it rings. | Write, destructive |
With control
| Tool | What you said | Kind |
|---|---|---|
finish_step | “I've done the fold.” | Write |
answer_ask | Your answer to a question the workflow asked. | Write |
acknowledge_wait | “I'm back” after a wait is over; stops its alarm. | Write |
pause_workflow | “Hold it, I have to go out.” Nothing rings until you carry on. | Write |
unpause_workflow | “Carry on.” | Write |
extend_wait | “Give it ten more minutes.” | Write |
shorten_wait | “Take five minutes off.” | Write |
move_to_step | “I pressed Finished by mistake”, or “the dough is ready now”. | Write |
resume_workflow | Resume a workflow that was set aside. | Write |
abort_workflow | Abort a workflow that was set aside or paused. | Write, destructive |
Retrying a control tool with the same request id has its effect once, so a dropped connection never finishes a step twice.
Things to ask
- “Make me a workflow: make tea, then wait 4 minutes.”
- “I'm baking sourdough today. Put the folds and the rests on my phone: four folds, 30 minutes apart, then a 3-hour bulk.”
- “Remind me to take my vitamin every weekday at 8.”
- “What's left on my bake?”
- “Give the dough ten more minutes.”
- “Cancel the cleaning routine.”
Limits
So that a mistaken loop cannot flood your phone, a connection may create or cancel two workflows a minute, you may have 50 workflows that have not ended, and 100 may be created for you in a day. An assistant over a limit is told how long to wait.
Help, privacy and deleting your data
- Support: privacy@stepladderapp.com
- Privacy policy — what is stored, who processes it, and how to delete your account.
- To disconnect an assistant, open Agents in the app and remove it; its access ends at once.