Your workflows read and write files as they run. They save uploads, generate reports, build caches, keep counters, and hold SQLite databases. All of that lives in your workflow's storage, and Tines 3B lets you look inside it any time. This article explains what storage inspection is, why it's worth doing, and how to get the most out of it.
A Tines 3B workflow stores files in named volumes. Each volume is a folder your steps can open, read, write, and list, mounted at /storage/<name>. A step writes into a private view while it runs, and its changes only publish to the shared volume when the step succeeds, so other steps never see half-written files.
Storage is organized by space and by branch:
Live storage is what your published (main) workflow reads and writes on schedules, webhooks, and manual runs.
Draft storage is isolated per branch, so build and test files stay separate from your live data.
The browse storage view walks this structure for you: pick a branch, then a volume, then drill through folders to a single file. You can preview a file inline or download it. It's a read-only view, so looking never changes your data.
Why you might inspect your storage
Inspecting storage turns your workflow from a black box into something you can see into. A few common reasons:
Confirm your workflow did what you expected. After a run, open storage to check that the files you meant to create are actually there, in the folders you intended.
Debug a problem with real evidence. When a step behaves unexpectedly, the files it wrote (or didn't) usually tell you why, faster than reading logs alone.
Look inside a database or report. You can open a SQLite database and preview generated reports, dashboards, caches, and cursors to verify their contents.
Separate live from draft. Because drafts get their own storage, you can check that testing on a branch isn't touching your live data.
Pull a file out of Tines 3B. Download any stored file when you need to share it, archive it, or inspect it in another tool.
The benefits of the feature
Faster troubleshooting. Seeing the actual files removes guesswork, so you spend less time reproducing issues and more time fixing them.
More trust in your automation. Verifying real output gives you confidence that a workflow is doing the right thing before you rely on it in production.
Safe by design. The view is read-only, so you can explore freely without risking your data.
A clearer view of your data model. Browsing the folder layout shows you how your steps organize files, which helps you spot a design that has drifted from what you intended.
Awareness of what you're storing. The storage-by-space view shows how much space each space is using, so growth never sneaks up on you.
How to inspect your storage
Open the workflow's actions menu and choose Browse storage.
Pick the branch you want. Choose the workflow's main entry to see live storage, or a draft branch to see that branch's isolated files.
Select a volume, then click through its folders until you reach a file.
Preview the file inline, or download it if you need a local copy.
To see storage across a whole space, open monitoring and use the storage-by-space view, then select a space to browse its files.
Learn how to identify spaces that consume a lot of storage in our monitoring article here.
Best practices
Inspect right after a test run. Checking storage while the run is fresh in your mind makes it easy to connect a file to the step that wrote it.
Check the right branch. If something looks wrong in production, browse live storage. If you're validating a change, browse the draft branch you built it on.
Read the folder layout, not just the files. Well-designed workflows give each job, customer, or worker its own folder. If everything is piling into one folder or file, that's a signal to revisit the design.
Preview before you download. A quick inline preview usually answers your question without pulling the whole file down.
Watch storage growth by space. If one space keeps climbing, look for temporary files that could use run-scoped storage instead of durable storage, or unrelated data that would be better split into separate volumes.
Inspecting storage is one of the simplest habits you can build to keep your workflows reliable. A quick look confirms the good cases and surfaces the surprising ones early, long before they reach the people who depend on your automation.