authentik/website/docs/flow/flows.md

---
title: Overview
---

Flows are a method of describing a sequence of stages. A stage represents a single verification or logic step. They are used to authenticate users, enroll them, and more.

For example, a standard login flow would consist of the following stages:

- Identification, user identifies themselves via a username or email address
- Password, the user's password is checked against the hash in the database
- Log the user in

Upon flow execution, a plan containing all stages is generated. This means that all attached policies are evaluated upon execution. This behaviour can be altered by enabling the **Re-evaluate Policies** option on the binding.

To determine which flow is linked, authentik searches all flows with the required designation and chooses the first instance the current user has access to.

## Permissions

Flows can have policies assigned to them. These policies determine if the current user is allowed to see and use this flow.

## Designation

Flows are designated for a single purpose. This designation changes when a flow is used. The following designations are available:

### Authentication

This is designates a flow to be used for authentication.

The authentication flow should always contain a [**User Login**](stages/user_login.md) stage, which attaches the staged user to the current session.

### Invalidation

This designates a flow to be used to invalidate a session.

This stage should always contain a [**User Logout**](stages/user_logout.md) stage, which resets the current session.

### Enrollment

This designates a flow for enrollment. This flow can contain any amount of verification stages, such as [**email**](stages/email/index.md) or [**captcha**](stages/captcha/index.md). At the end, to create the user, you can use the [**user_write**](stages/user_write.md) stage, which either updates the currently staged user, or if none exists, creates a new one.

### Unenrollment

This designates a flow for unenrollment. This flow can contain any amount of verification stages, such as [**email**](stages/email/index.md) or [**captcha**](stages/captcha/index.md). As a final stage, to delete the account, use the [**user_delete**](stages/user_delete.md) stage.

### Recovery

This designates a flow for recovery. This flow normally contains an [**identification**](stages/identification/index.md) stage to find the user. It can also contain any amount of verification stages, such as [**email**](stages/email/index.md) or [**captcha**](stages/captcha/index.md).
Afterwards, use the [**prompt**](stages/prompt/index.md) stage to ask the user for a new password and the [**user_write**](stages/user_write.md) stage to update the password.

### Setup

This designates a flow for general setup. This designation doesn't have any constraints in what you can do. For example, by default this designation is used to configure Factors, like change a password and setup TOTP.