README.md
Conductor is an open-source, durable workflow engine built at Netflix for orchestrating microservices, AI agents, and event-driven workflows at internet scale. Actively maintained by Orkes and a growing community.
npm install -g @conductor-oss/conductor-cli
conductor server start
Open http://localhost:8080 — your server is running with the built-in UI.
Run your first workflow:
# Create a workflow that calls an API and parses the response — no workers needed
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conductor-oss/conductor/main/docs/quickstart/workflow.json -o workflow.json
conductor workflow create workflow.json
conductor workflow start -w hello_workflow --sync
See the Quickstart guide for the full walkthrough, including writing workers and replaying workflows.
<details> <summary><strong>Prefer Docker?</strong></summary>docker run -p 8080:8080 conductoross/conductor:latest
All CLI commands have equivalent cURL/API calls. See the Quickstart for details.
</details>Conductor Skills are pre-built, production-ready workflow packages that give your AI agents superpowers — retrieval, web search, document processing, and more. Install a skill, wire it into your agent, and ship.
# Install the skills CLI
npm install -g @conductor-oss/conductor-skills
# List available skills
conductor-skills list
# Install a skill
conductor-skills install <skill-name>
| Durable execution | Every step is persisted. Survive crashes, restarts, and network failures. At-least-once task delivery with configurable retries, timeouts, and compensation flows. |
| Deterministic workflows | JSON definitions separate orchestration from implementation — no side effects, no hidden state. Every run produces the same task graph. Replay any workflow months later. |
| AI agent orchestration | 14+ native LLM providers, MCP tool calling, function calling, human-in-the-loop approval, vector databases (Pinecone, pgvector, MongoDB Atlas) for RAG. |
| Dynamic at runtime | Dynamic forks, dynamic tasks, and dynamic sub-workflows — all resolved at runtime. LLMs can generate workflow definitions as JSON and Conductor executes them immediately. No compile/deploy cycle. |
| Full replayability | Restart from the beginning, rerun from any task, or retry just the failed step — on any workflow, at any time, indefinitely. |
| Internet scale | Battle-tested at Netflix, Tesla, LinkedIn, and JP Morgan. Scales horizontally to billions of workflow executions. |
| Polyglot workers | Write workers in Java, Python, Go, JavaScript, C#, Ruby, or Rust. Workers poll, execute, and report — run them anywhere. |
| Self-hosted, no lock-in | Apache 2.0 licensed. 8+ persistence backends, 6 message brokers. Runs anywhere Docker or a JVM runs. |
| Language | Repository | Install |
|---|---|---|
| ☕ Java | conductor-oss/java-sdk | Maven Central |
| 🐍 Python | conductor-oss/python-sdk | pip install conductor-python |
| 🟨 JavaScript | conductor-oss/javascript-sdk | npm install @io-orkes/conductor-javascript |
| 🐹 Go | conductor-oss/go-sdk | go get github.com/conductor-sdk/conductor-go |
| 🟣 C# | conductor-oss/csharp-sdk | dotnet add package conductor-csharp |
| 💎 Ruby | conductor-oss/ruby-sdk | gem install conductor_ruby |
| 🦀 Rust | conductor-oss/rust-sdk | (incubating) |
| Backend | Configuration |
|---|---|
| Redis + ES7 (default) | config-redis.properties |
| Redis + ES8 | config-redis-es8.properties |
| Redis + OpenSearch | config-redis-os.properties |
| Postgres | config-postgres.properties |
| Postgres + ES7 | config-postgres-es7.properties |
| MySQL + ES7 | config-mysql.properties |
Requirements: Docker Desktop, Java (JDK) 21+, Node 18 (for UI)
git clone https://github.com/conductor-oss/conductor
cd conductor
./gradlew build
# (optional) Build UI
# ./build_ui.sh
# Start local server
cd server
../gradlew bootRun
See the full build guide for details.
</details>Yes. Conductor OSS is the continuation of the original Netflix Conductor repository after Netflix contributed the project to the open-source foundation.
</details> <details> <summary><strong>Is this project actively maintained?</strong></summary>Yes. Orkes is the primary maintainer and offers an enterprise SaaS platform for Conductor across all major cloud providers.
</details> <details> <summary><strong>Can Conductor scale to handle my workload?</strong></summary>Yes. Built at Netflix, battle-tested at internet scale. Conductor scales horizontally across multiple server instances to handle billions of workflow executions.
</details> <details> <summary><strong>Is Orkes Conductor compatible with Conductor OSS?</strong></summary>100% compatible. Orkes Conductor is built on top of Conductor OSS with full API and workflow compatibility.
</details>We welcome contributions from everyone!
See the Conductor OSS Roadmap. Want to participate? Reach out.
Conductor is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.