manysteps

ManySteps is an open-source framework designed to orchestrate and execute multi-step, long-running processes across distributed systems. It provides a lightweight runtime and a declarative workflow language that enables developers to define complex pipelines as directed acyclic graphs of individual steps. The design emphasizes modularity, portability, and fault tolerance, with a focus on predictable retries and clear observability.

History and development Notes about ManySteps indicate it began as a community-driven project in the early 2020s, with the first public releases aiming to simplify orchestration beyond single-machine scripts. Over time, it attracted a small but active set of contributors who expanded plugins, integrations, and documentation. The project is maintained under an open-source license and commonly used in environments where reproducible, auditable workflows are important.

Architecture and components The framework consists of a core runtime, step plugins, a scheduler, and an event bus for communication. Workflows are defined as graphs where each node represents a reusable step with specified inputs, outputs, retry policies, and timeouts. The engine coordinates parallel execution where possible, enforces dependencies, and persists state to support resumption after failures. A plugin system enables integration with common storage systems, queues, and monitoring tools, while APIs (REST and gRPC in typical deployments) facilitate external control and querying.

Features and use cases Notable features include a declarative workflow language, dependency-aware scheduling, configurable retries with backoff, timeouts, and rich observability. ManySteps is commonly used for data pipelines, ETL tasks, machine learning pipelines, and enterprise processes that require reliable, auditable orchestration across services.

See also Other workflow management systems and DAG schedulers provide contextual comparison, including projects with similar goals in distributed task orchestration.