Questions and answers

A BPMN, DMN and form editor for Camunda 7, Camunda 8, Operaton and CIB seven, with checks, deployment, tests and more. It comes as a plugin for JetBrains IDEs, as an extension for VS Code and as a penstock command line. A desktop app is planned. Diagrams stay in your project and in version control. See Getting started.

Any JetBrains IDE from 2024.2 that has JCEF, which the standard downloads do, VS Code 1.88 or later and the editors built on it, and the penstock command line, which needs Node.js 22.22 or later. See Installing in a JetBrains IDE and Command line.

It was renamed Penstock in 2026. It is the same plugin with the same id, so it updates in place. Nothing needs to be reinstalled.

Yes. The editors, the properties panels, templates, token simulation, the check, lint, comments, trace paths, deploy, Monitor, export, share and import are free. Pro and Team add what only Penstock does. Every machine starts with 30 days of Pro. See Plans and licence.

Camunda 7, Camunda 8, Operaton and CIB seven, plus plain BPMN 2.0. See Engines.

Yes. Classic loads the plain bpmn-js editor and no Camunda extension, so nothing it edits adds Camunda attributes. Data inputs and outputs are written as bpmn:ioSpecification. See The properties panel.

Team. One rule: Pro on your machine, Team in a pipeline (any run with CI set). A pipeline gets no trial. See Buying and signing in.

No. Buying opens the checkout, notices the payment and signs you in with a code sent to your e-mail. A key still works if you want to type one.

Yes, except deploy, engine questions, the connector download and the licence check. A licence works 30 days without a connection.

Penstock offers Free Pro for students, teachers and open-source maintainers. See Buying and signing in.

Only to the engine you configure, when you deploy. There is no telemetry. The full list of network use is in Security and privacy.

To the secret store of your tool, once for each profile. Never to a project file, and never to the web page in the editor.

Only on an engine you mark deployment.forTests: true, or a local one you confirm. It removes what it deployed. See Scenarios.

Yes. Comments are free and are kept in the diagram file, so they travel through Git with it. See Comments.

Select it and use Trace paths. The rest of the diagram is dimmed. See Trace paths.

Yes. The Try tab of the decision editor runs the table against values you type and says which rules match. See The DMN editor.

Each editor has its own tabs in the sidebar. A diagram has Properties, Scenarios, Problems, Comments, Monitor and Code. A decision has Properties, Problems and Try. A form has Properties, Preview and Problems. See The sidebar.

There is none. Every change is written to the file at once. See The BPMN editor.

Yes. The Text tab at the bottom of the editor. Both tabs edit the same file.

Yes, and it is free. Right-click the task and choose Go to. See Editing a diagram.

In ~/.penstock/preferences.json, for every tool on your machine. Never in penstock.yaml. See The toolbar and the More menu.

It draws the whole diagram again from the process model. Press Undo to take it back. See Auto layout.

No. The editor in your IDE works alone. The command line adds pipelines, scripts and the MCP server. See Command line.

22.22 or later, with npm.

0 all well. 1 findings, refusal or failure. 2 crash.

No. Instances can finish on Camunda 7 or be moved with Camunda's Data Migrator. See Camunda 7 to 8.

Use Share as HTML. It makes one file that opens in any browser.

Yes. Import a diagram handles draw.io, Visio, Signavio and Bizagi files.

Open a GitHub issue with the versions and a .bpmn file that shows it. Security problems go to SECURITY.md.