Question 1

What is Cromus?

Accepted Answer

Cromus is an AI Workflow Intelligence platform. It helps you convert standard operating procedures (SOPs) into portable, reusable AI skills, assemble them into visual workflows, and simulate costs and performance before execution.

Question 2

Who is it for?

Accepted Answer

Cromus is designed for operations teams, content professionals, developers, and AI workflow designers who want to plan, optimize, and standardize their AI-powered processes before running them at scale.

Question 3

What is a SKILL.md file?

Accepted Answer

A SKILL.md file is a structured, reusable AI skill definition. It contains metadata (name, category, version), a list of steps, model requirements, and prompt templates. Skills are the building blocks of Cromus workflows.

Question 4

Does Cromus run AI models?

Accepted Answer

No. Cromus is a planning and design tool. All intelligence — scoring, optimization, and cost simulation — is deterministic and rule-based, with zero LLM inference calls. This means you can plan workflows without incurring any AI inference costs.

Question 5

How does cost simulation work?

Accepted Answer

The cost simulator estimates token usage and model costs for each step in your workflow. It supports 80+ verified AI models across 13 providers and 5 simulation modes (Eco, Cost, Balanced, Quality, and Self-Hosted Compute) so you can compare costs across commercial APIs and self-hosted stacks before committing to execution.

Question 6

What is Eco mode?

Accepted Answer

Eco mode is one of five simulation modes in the cost simulator. It prioritizes the most cost-efficient model choices for each workflow step, helping you find the cheapest way to run your AI workflows without sacrificing quality. For self-hosted alternatives, try Self-Hosted Compute mode (which estimates cost from compute tiers rather than API pricing).

Question 7

Can I export workflows?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Cromus lets you export portable skill packs as ZIP files. These contain your SKILL.md definitions, wrapper prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, an ops savings report, and an interoperability profile — ready to be integrated into your existing tooling, deployed to LangGraph, CrewAI, n8n, or local stacks, or shared with team members.

Question 8

Can I share workflows publicly?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Cromus generates read-only share links for any workflow. Recipients can view the workflow graph, skill details, and cost estimates without needing a Cromus account or login.

Question 9

How is Cromus different from agent tools?

Accepted Answer

Agent frameworks like LangChain or CrewAI focus on runtime orchestration — executing AI tasks in real time. Cromus focuses on the design and planning phase: converting SOPs into skills, building workflows visually, simulating costs, and optimizing before any execution happens. Cromus also works alongside these frameworks — you can target your compiled skills for specific ecosystems like LangGraph, CrewAI, or n8n so they're ready to deploy.

Question 10

Is my data private?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Since Cromus does not execute AI models or make LLM inference calls, your SOPs, skills, and workflow data stay within the platform. No data is sent to third-party LLM providers during planning and simulation.

Question 11

Can teams collaborate?

Accepted Answer

Team collaboration features — including shared workspaces, skill libraries, and version history — are available on the Ops plan.

Question 12

How often do model costs change?

Accepted Answer

LLM pricing changes frequently as providers update their models. Cromus maintains a verified, admin-curated pricing registry so your cost simulations reflect current market rates. The platform covers 80+ verified AI models across 13 providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Mistral, Meta, Cohere, Amazon (Nova), Microsoft (Phi), Qwen, Z.ai, and Kimi — with weekly automated checks and manual verification. For teams using self-hosted models, Self-Hosted Compute mode estimates costs based on compute tiers instead of API pricing.

Question 13

What is the Open Workflow Ecosystem?

Accepted Answer

The Open Workflow Ecosystem is Cromus's registry of 24 open-source AI tools across 7 categories — including agent frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI), orchestration libraries (LangChain, LlamaIndex), local inference runners (Ollama, vLLM), workflow engines (n8n, Prefect), and more. When compiling skills or exporting workflows, you can target a specific ecosystem so your output is ready to deploy.