Using data.
The best flows feel personal because they use the real details of the event. Drop a piece of the trigger into any message and the flow fills it in live when it runs. You write a readable name; your viewers see the real value.
The data picker
Wherever a node accepts text, a data picker lets you insert a value from the flow instead of typing it. Open it, search by plain name, and pick something. It drops in as a tidy chip that resolves to the live value at run time.
Three sources of data
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| The trigger | Details of the event that started the flow: who did it, how much, the message text, the reward name, and so on. These change every run. |
| Earlier nodes | Some nodes produce a value (an AI decision, a counter's new total). Later nodes can use it. |
| Channel tokens | The same $(...) tokens you use in the chatbot: things like the current game, your follower count, or a viewer's watch time. |
It is the same idea as commands
If you have written a chatbot command, this will feel familiar. The flow data picker offers the same channel tokens you already know from Variables, plus the live details of whatever started the flow. Anything that needs to know "who" or "how much" can pull it straight from the trigger.
Insert values from the picker rather than typing token names by hand. The picker only shows what is actually available at that point in the flow, so you cannot reference something that will not exist when it runs.
When each kind of data resolves
The two shapes of value in the picker resolve at different moments, and it matters for a flow that waits or takes a few steps. A {{...}} value (the trigger, or an earlier node's output) is frozen the instant the flow starts: it is a snapshot of the event that fired it, and it stays that value for the rest of the run even if the real thing changes a second later. A $(watchtime)-style value is live: it is read fresh at the moment it is actually sent, so a channel token in a message after a Wait node reflects whatever is true then, not whatever was true when the flow began.