New in Forest, July 2026: choose what AI runs in your Workflows, and what stays deterministic.

Mid-summer round. Every change this month points to the same thing: granular per-step control over what stays deterministic and what you delegate to AI. And governance over who can even set it up.

Here's what we shipped in July.

Deterministic Workflow steps (Load Related Record + Trigger Action)

The workflow author now declares intent, the runtime honors it. On a Load Related Record step, you pick the source record (workflow start, or any earlier loaded record), the collection to look into, and optional filters (with AND/OR conditions). Same on Trigger Action: pick the base record and the exact action to run. What you already know stays hard-coded — no AI interpretation at runtime. Get Data and Update steps ship in Part 2.

Manual / AI-assisted / Full AI execution modes

For the parts where AI helps, every execution step (Load Related Data, Guidance Task, Trigger Action with forms) now runs in one of three modes:

• Manual — the operator does everything, same as before.

• AI-assisted — AI drafts (email body, form fields, best-guess record pick), operator reviews and submits.

• Full AI — AI decides, fills, and submits on its own.

If context is missing in Full AI mode, the step falls back to AI-assisted automatically — the operator sees pre-filled fields and confirms rather than the workflow stalling. Trigger Action without a form only has two modes (Manual / Automatic) because there's nothing to fill.

Escalation without a click

Escalation steps can auto-land in an Inbox instead of waiting for the operator to press Escalate. One more decision you can delegate instead of routing every escalation through an operator's click. External triggers (webhook, MCP) come next.

"Process Owner" permission level

Workflows now sit behind their own permission level. Editors keep everything they had — layouts, Workspaces, Summary Views — but Workflow edits require the new Process Owner role. Workflows carry more runtime risk than a layout tweak, so they get their own gate. Assign the role in Settings → Permissions.

This is Forest's monthly product update. Reply to your CSM or ping us in Slack for anything you'd like to see next. The Forest MCP Server stays live for AI agents with permissions and audit trail preserved.