You’d do it with colors.
The GFUI (Glowforge user interface) determines order of operations based on type of operation (cut vs. engrave) and color; that’s how it decides on the steps to put in the left panel. Colors are ordered by their hex number, from 000000 (black) to FFFFFF (white), with lower numbers first.
Here’s a post that might be helpful: Custom Inkscape, Illustrator, CorelDraw and Affinity Designer Color Palettes for ordering operations in GFUI