Step Studio brings the visual editors of the Step platform to your local machine. It lets you create and maintain Automation Packages, execute Plans locally, and execute or deploy your automation on a remote Step instance.

Studio works directly on the Automation Package files in your project, including its YAML descriptor and Plan fragments, alongside the source code and resources used by your Keywords. You can use Studio and your IDE on the same project without maintaining separate copies of the automation.

Why use Step Studio?

Local-first development and low-code editing. Step Studio brings the low-code advantages of the Step platform to your local machine:

• For developers, combine visual automation with code-first development, switching between the visual editor and your IDE at any time, depending on the task.
• For testers and business users, apply modern development practices such as Git, versioning, branching and CI/CD to your automation, while still building and maintaining it visually, without writing code.

Unified automation across teams. Developers, testers and business users collaborate on the same codebase and automation assets, each with the tools and level of abstraction that suit them.

Faster development with local execution. Teams build, execute, debug and iterate on automation locally, with fast feedback and less dependence on central infrastructure. Developers can test their changes directly by executing Plans locally in Studio, without deploying each change to a Step instance.

One-click deployment to the Step platform. Locally developed automation is deployed to the Step platform in a single click, ready for distributed execution, orchestration, scheduling and reporting.

Studio also integrates the Step AI Agent for AI-assisted creation and modification of Automation Packages: describe a test case in plain language and the agent generates, executes and repairs the automation for it. See Create automation with AI.

Start Step Studio

Prerequisites

• Download the Step CLI for your edition from the CLI download locations.
• Install Java 21 or later.
• For remote execution and deployment, use a CLI version matching the target Step server.
• For the Enterprise edition, place your Studio license in your home directory as step-31-studio-license.dat or step-studio-license.dat.

A central Step instance is not required to edit a package or execute Plans locally. Depending on your Keyword types, local execution may require additional runtimes; see the local execution prerequisites.

Launch Studio

Using the Step CLI, run:

step studio

This starts Studio locally and opens it in your browser at http://localhost:8080/ by default.

Use step studio --no-browser to disable automatic browser launch.

Open or create an Automation Package

Use Open package on the welcome screen to open the local folder containing your automation-package.yaml, or New package to create a package with a name and location.

For a Java project, the descriptor may be under src/main/resources. Open that source directory rather than a build output such as target/classes, where the next build would overwrite your edits. See the Java project limitation for entities declared through annotations.

You can also open a package directly from the terminal:

# Open the package in the current directory
step studio open

# Open a package in another directory
step studio open --directory=./my-automation-package

# Initialize a new package and open it
step studio open --init --directory=./my-new-package --name="My automation"

Studio prompts you to upgrade packages that use an older schema version. When opening a package from the CLI, add --upgrade to start the upgrade. Upgrading rewrites the descriptor and outdated fragments; comments in rewritten files may be lost.

Edit your automation

Studio supports editing the following entities in an Automation Package:

Changes saved in Studio are written to the Automation Package files.

Reload changes made outside Studio

After editing package files in an IDE, switching branches, or pulling from Git, click the refresh button beside the package name (Reload package) to read the current files from disk.

Studio does not automatically reload files or notify you when they change.

Create automation with AI

Step Studio provides an interface to the Step AI Agent for AI-driven automation. With Create with AI, you describe test cases in plain language, or paste an existing specification, and the agent generates the Keywords and Plans, executes them, and repairs them until they pass. The automation is generated into the package you are working in, so you can inspect, refine, and maintain it in Studio’s visual editors or in your IDE like any other automation.

The Step AI Agent requires additional setup in Studio, including the agent package and an Anthropic API key. See Getting started with the Step AI Agent in Step Studio for installation and a quick start.

Executing Plans in Step Studio

Plans can be executed locally on your machine or remotely on the connected Step instance. In the Plan execution dialog, select Locally or Remotely to choose the execution target before starting the execution.

Local execution

Local execution uses the CLI’s agent provisioning to start the required agents as processes on your machine. Java, Node.js, and .NET agents are supported, subject to the runtimes and tools required by the Keywords you use. The Java and Node.js agents are bundled with the CLI; other requirements depend on the Keyword type.

For supported Keyword types, runtime installation, and local agent settings, see CLI local execution. Studio reads the local agent options from the CLI configuration.

The execution report is available locally in Studio. By default, local execution history and attachments are temporary and do not survive a Studio restart. To retain them between sessions, configure persistent report storage.

Remote execution

Plans can be executed on the connected Step instance.

The remote Step instance can be configured through the CLI configuration; changes take effect after restarting Studio. The configured server and project appear in the remote connection menu (globe icon) in Studio’s header.

To execute the full Automation Package, open the remote connection menu (1), choose Execute Automation Package (2), then confirm with Execute (3). The results provide links to view the executions on the remote Step server.

Additional Automation Package execution options, such as wrapping Plans in a TestSet (wrapIntoTestSet=true), are also read from stepcli.properties and can be viewed in the dialog.

The annotated images combine the menu and confirmation dialog to show the steps together. In Studio, the menu closes when the dialog opens.

The automation is executed in a temporary, isolated context. This does not install the package for later use or activate its schedules. See remote execution in Step for the underlying CLI behavior.

Deploy an Automation Package

To deploy the current package, open the remote connection menu (globe icon) in Studio’s header (1), select Deploy Automation Package (2), then confirm with Deploy (3). The target Step instance is specified in the CLI configuration.

Studio also reads deployment options, such as versionName and activationExpression, from stepcli.properties. You can view these options in the dialog.

Deployment makes the package’s entities available on the target Step instance for subsequent use and activates its contained schedules. You can then use the central platform for distributed execution, scheduling, and reporting. See deploying Automation Packages for details.

Configuration

Studio uses two configuration files for different purposes:

Restart Studio after changing either configuration.

CLI configuration

The CLI automatically reads stepcli.properties from your home directory. For example:

stepUrl=https://step.example.com
token=<API_KEY>
projectName=MyProject

# Optional local agent settings
localAgentMaxTokens=5
localAgentStartTimeout=60

The project and API key are required for a remote Enterprise instance. See user credentials and API keys to obtain a key.

For a project-specific configuration file, start Studio with -c:

step studio -c ./project-cli.properties

This file overrides matching settings from the home-directory file. See CLI configuration files for the full resolution rules, and local execution options for agent settings.

Studio configuration

Place studio.properties next to the CLI executable or in the directory from which you start Studio. You can also select a file explicitly with the Java system property -Dstudio.properties=/path/to/studio.properties.

Studio uses the explicitly selected file when that property is set. Otherwise, it looks in the current working directory first, then next to the executable. It loads one external file over its built-in defaults; files in these locations are not merged together.

Persist local execution reports

By default, Studio keeps execution data in memory and stores attachments and resources in a temporary directory. To retain local execution reports across restarts, configure both MongoDB storage and a persistent resources directory:

# MongoDB must be running and accessible at this address
datasource.mongo.type=step.core.collections.mongodb.MongoDBCollectionFactory
datasource.mongo.collections=executions,agentProvisioningStatuses,metricSamples,\
  reportNodeTimeSeries,reportNodeTimeSeries_day,reportNodeTimeSeries_hour,\
  reportNodeTimeSeries_minute,reportNodeTimeSeries_week,reports,resolvedPlans,\
  streaming_resources,timeseries,timeseries_day,timeseries_hour,\
  timeseries_minute,timeseries_week
datasource.mongo.properties.host=127.0.0.1
datasource.mongo.properties.port=27017
datasource.mongo.properties.database=step-studio

# Persistent directory for attachments and resources
resources.dir=C:/step/studio-resources

The Automation Package definitions continue to be stored in your project files.

Use manually started agents

Interactive sessions currently require agents that you start separately. To use these instead of Studio’s automatic provisioning, add:

plugins.LocalAgentProvisioningControllerPlugin.enabled=false

Start the required agents manually and configure them to connect to the local Studio instance. See agent installation and configuration for agent setup.

Limitations

The current beta has the following limitations:

• Keyword support: Silk Performer execution is not supported. PDF Compare, Image Compare, their masks, and QF-Test are not supported in Studio.
• Java projects: Keywords and Plans defined in code through Java annotations are not listed in Studio. Plans calling these entities cannot be executed there.
• Scheduling: schedule definitions can be edited and executed once, but Studio does not trigger recurring executions. Deploy the package to a Step instance to use its schedules.
• Interactive sessions: automatic agent provisioning cannot be used for interactive sessions. Use manually started agents.
• External file changes: there is no file watcher, automatic reload, or change notification. Reload the package after changing its files outside Studio.