​Playground

Playground (Beta)

The Playground mode in Kestra allows you to build workflows iteratively, one task at a time. This feature is especially useful when building data processing flows, where you typically start with a task extracting data, and you need to inspect the output before knowing what kind of transformation might be required. Then, you can work on that transformation task without rerunning the extraction task.

If you've ever worked with a Jupyter notebook, you might be familiar with this pattern: you run the first cell to extract data, then you run the second cell to transform that data, and you can rerun the second cell multiple times to test different transformations without having to rerun the first cell again. Kestra's Playground mode allows you to do the same within your flows.

Use Playground mode

How does Playground mode work? Follow the steps below to try it out:

1. Enable the Playground mode.
2. Add a task to your flow and hit Play to run it.
3. Add a second task and hit Play to run it, reusing the output of the first task.
4. Modify the second task and hit Play again to rerun only the second task.
5. Add a third task and hit Play to run it, reusing the outputs of the first and second tasks.
6. Keep iterating by adding more tasks and running them individually, or click on Run all tasks or Run all downstream tasks options to run multiple tasks at once.

Kestra tracks up to 10 recent playground runs, so you can go back to inspect the outputs of previously executed tasks. Older runs are purged automatically. Playground runs won't appear in the regular execution list to avoid confusion with production executions.

Note that Playground mode requires a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) structure. So, you won't be able to run the second task before the first task has been played. Also, if you change the flow-level inputs, variables, pluginDefaults, or outputs properties while in Playground mode, the existing task runs will be automatically reset, and you will need to rerun them. Kestra does it to ensure that the outputs of the tasks are consistent with the flow-level properties.

To see Playground in action, check out the demo below.