Learn Kestra by Building Your First Workflows
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Use this tutorial to learn Kestra’s core concepts and build flows step by step.
Before you start: Complete the Quickstart so you have Kestra running locally. This tutorial assumes you can open the Kestra UI at http://localhost:8080.
Using an AI coding agent? Add the Kestra MCP server to Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible tool. It gives your agent live access to plugin docs, blueprints, and Kestra documentation — useful throughout this tutorial and beyond.
What you can do with Kestra
You can use Kestra to:
- Run workflows on demand, event-driven, or on a schedule.
- Interact with any system or language through plugins and tasks.
- Orchestrate microservices, batch jobs, scripts, SQL queries, data syncs, dbt or Spark jobs, and other processes.
This tutorial is a sequence of six modules. Work through them in order — each one builds on the flow you created in the previous module:
- Fundamentals – Build your first Hello World flow and learn declarative workflow design.
- Inputs – Make flows dynamic and reusable by passing values in at runtime.
- Outputs – Pass data between tasks and flows.
- Triggers – Run flows automatically on a schedule or in response to events.
- Flowable tasks – Control execution logic with branching, loops, and parallel tasks.
- Error handling – Make flows resilient with automatic retries and alerts.
After completing this tutorial, you will be able to build, automate, and debug a complete Kestra workflow that takes inputs, passes data between tasks, runs on a trigger, branches its logic, and recovers from failures.
Fundamentals
Build your first Hello World flow in Kestra. Follow a step-by-step tutorial to learn declarative workflow design and core Kestra concepts from scratch.
Inputs
Discover how to add dynamic inputs to your Kestra workflows to make them flexible and reusable across different scenarios.
Outputs
Learn how to pass data between tasks and flows in Kestra using Outputs, enabling complex data processing pipelines.
Triggers
Automate Kestra flows with triggers. Schedule workflows or trigger them based on events like file uploads, API calls, or other flow completions.
Flowable tasks
Master Kestra's Flowable tasks to control workflow logic. Learn how to implement branching, loops, and parallel execution for complex orchestration scenarios.
Error Handling
Build resilient Kestra workflows with robust error handling. Configure retries, set up alerts, and manage failures at the flow and namespace levels.
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