Language

Inputs

Typed workflow inputs and their host-facing contract.

The Inputs Block

The optional inputs block declares the workflow’s callee-side signature — the named values a caller (a human at the entry point, or a parent workflow via a subgraph node’s call-site binding — inputs: in dip 2, params: in dip 1) must or may supply at run start:

  inputs
    idea: text
      required: true
      prompt: "What do you want built?"
      description: "One or two sentences describing the change."
      max_length: 4000
      multiline: true
    target_branch: text
      default: main
      pattern: "^[A-Za-z0-9._/-]+$"
    risk: enum
      default: medium
      options: low, medium, high

Each entry is name: type with an optional indented block of attributes. Declaration order is significant — a host renders inputs as an ordered form — so the formatter never reorders entries.

Input Types

The six v1 types are:

Type	Description
`text`	Free text value
`number`	Numeric value
`bool`	Boolean value
`enum`	One of a fixed set of `options`
`file`	A file
`secret`	A secret value

Attributes

Each entry may carry an indented block of attributes:

Attribute	Description
`required`	Whether the caller must supply this input
`prompt`	Text a host shows when collecting the value
`description`	Human-readable description of the input
`default`	Value used when the caller supplies none
`options`	The allowed values for an `enum`
`pattern`	A regex the value must match
`min`	Minimum value
`max`	Maximum value
`max_length`	Maximum length
`multiline`	Whether the value spans multiple lines

Referencing Inputs

Reference a declared input as ${inputs.name} in prompts. The inputs namespace is closed: it contains exactly the names declared in the inputs block, unlike the open ctx namespace.

Validation

Because the namespace is closed, references and declarations are checked:

An unrecognized type is DIP155.
A reference to an undeclared input is DIP156.
A reference inside a tool node’s command: is DIP157 (inputs never interpolate into a shell).

Introspection

The declared inputs schema is the typed, introspectable contract a host uses to collect values before a run. Print it with:

dippin inputs [--format text|json] <file>

--format json emits a stable array in declaration order — each entry with name, type, required, and any declared attributes. Defaults are typed (a number default is a JSON number), and a workflow with no inputs emits [], never null.

The same schema is surfaced by dippin inspect --format json for a .dipx bundle: the verified payload includes the entry workflow’s declared inputs schema, so a host can enumerate what to collect without unpacking.