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Flowise

What is Flowise?​

Flowise is a visual, low-code builder for LLM apps and AI agents. Prototype agent and RAG flows by dragging nodes together in its editor, then call the resulting flow from Laravel over HTTP.

Start Flowise​

./laradock start flowise

Stop Flowise​

Stopping just pauses the container; your flows are safe (kept in the flowise Docker volume):

./laradock stop flowise

To delete the container entirely (the flowise volume, and everything in it, is still untouched):

./laradock remove flowise

Configuration​

All settings live in flowise/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
FLOWISE_VERSIONlatestImage tag from the flowiseai/flowise Docker Hub image.
FLOWISE_HOST_PORT3020Host-side port the Flowise builder/API is published on (container port 3000).

Flows, credentials, and chat history persist in the flowise volume at /root/.flowise across restarts.

Change the Flowise version​

Set the version in your .env:

FLOWISE_VERSION=latest

Then apply the change:

./laradock rebuild flowise

Flows and credentials live in the flowise volume, separate from the image, so changing versions doesn't touch your data. Restart the container after rebuilding: ./laradock restart flowise.

Connect​

Open the builder at http://localhost:3020. Health check: /api/v1/ping returns pong. Once you've built a flow, call it from your app via its prediction API endpoint (shown in the Flowise UI for that flow); from inside another container that's reachable at http://flowise:3000.

Backup and restore​

Flowise stores flows, credentials, and chat history in a named Docker volume (not a bind-mounted host folder), so back it up by copying the container's data directory out to your host while the container is running:

./laradock cp flowise:/root/.flowise ./flowise-backup

To restore, copy a backup folder back in (the container must already exist), then restart:

./laradock cp ./flowise-backup/. flowise:/root/.flowise

Restart afterward: ./laradock restart flowise.

Start completely fresh (wipe all data)​

To throw away every flow, credential, and chat history and start Flowise from a clean, empty state (⚠️ this permanently deletes everything in the flowise volume, back up first if you need anything):

./laradock stop flowise
./laradock remove flowise
docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q --filter name=flowise)
./laradock start flowise

Flowise's data lives in a named Docker volume, not a DATA_PATH_HOST folder, so removing the container alone doesn't touch it, you have to remove the volume too. The filter matches on the volume name containing flowise, if you run multiple Laradock projects on the same machine, check docker volume ls | grep flowise first and remove the exact one for this project.

Common issues​

  • Builder loads but a flow's API calls fail. Confirm the flow is saved and, if it uses an external provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), that the corresponding credentials are configured in Flowise's credential store, not just typed into a node.
  • Can't reach the API from your Laravel app. From inside another container, use http://flowise:3000, not localhost:3020, the host port only applies from outside Docker.
  • Port already in use on your host. Change FLOWISE_HOST_PORT in .env and restart: ./laradock restart flowise.
  • Flows disappeared after recreating the container. Data lives in the flowise named volume, not the container itself, so ./laradock remove flowise followed by ./laradock start flowise is safe. It's only gone if the volume itself was removed (see Start completely fresh above), or if you ran raw docker compose down -v for the whole project, which removes volumes for every service.

Want a more general-purpose automation/workflow tool alongside AI nodes? See n8n. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.