Conductor - Internet scale Workflow Engine
Orchestrating distributed systems means wrestling with failures, retries, and state recovery. Conductor handles all of that so you don't have to.
Conductor is an open-source, durable workflow engine built at Netflix for orchestrating microservices, AI agents, and durable workflows at internet scale. Trusted in production at Netflix, Tesla, LinkedIn, and J.P. Morgan. Actively maintained by Orkes and a growing community.
Get Running in 60 Seconds
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.
Prefer Docker?
docker run -p 8080:8080 conductoross/conductor:latest
All CLI commands have equivalent cURL/API calls. See the Quickstart for details.
Why Conductor is the workflow engine of choice for developers
| 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 by design | Orchestration is separated from business logic — determinism is an architectural guarantee, not a developer discipline. No side effects, no hidden state, no replay bugs. Your workers run any code they want; the workflow graph stays deterministic by construction. |
| 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, J.P. Morgan, and others. 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. |
AI-Native Orchestration
Conductor keeps orchestration deterministic by separating it from business logic. Workflows are defined as JSON; workers are plain code in any language and can call any system.
This gives you:
- AI-native orchestration: LLMs can generate and modify JSON workflow definitions directly, and Conductor executes them immediately.
- Deterministic orchestration and safe replay without forcing your business logic into a framework.
- Fast iteration by updating orchestration without redeploying workers.
Conductor scales horizontally to the internet scale by scaling both server and workers scaling independently based on queue depth and throughput. See the production deployment guide and scaling workers guide.
Conductor Skills for AI Agents
Conductor Skills are skills for your AI agent to create, manage and deploy workflows. No code-compile-deploy loop, just describe what you want, add context and have workflows running. You can also use it to build end to end applications that are backed by Conductor workflows.
Claude
# Install Skills for Claude Code /plugin marketplace add conductor-oss/conductor-skills /plugin install conductor@conductor-skills
Install for all detected agents
One command to auto-detect every supported agent on your system and install globally where possible. Re-run anytime — it only installs for newly detected agents.
macOS / Linux
curl -sSL https://conductor-oss.github.io/conductor-skills/install.sh | bash -s -- --all
Windows (PowerShell) / (cmd)
# powershell irm https://conductor-oss.github.io/conductor-skills/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1; .\install.ps1 -All # cmd powershell -c "irm https://conductor-oss.github.io/conductor-skills/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1; .\install.ps1 -All"
SDKs
| 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 | (incubating) |
| 🦀 Rust | conductor-oss/rust-sdk | (incubating) |
Documentation & Community
- Documentation — Architecture, guides, API reference, and cookbook recipes.
- Slack — Community discussions and support.
- Community Forum — Ask questions and share patterns.
Backend Configuration
| 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 |
Build From Source
Requirements and instructions
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.
FAQ
Is this the same as Netflix Conductor?
Yes. Conductor OSS is the continuation of the original Netflix Conductor repository after Netflix contributed the project to the open-source foundation.
Is Conductor open source?
Yes. Conductor is a fully open-source workflow engine licensed under Apache 2.0. You can self-host on your own infrastructure with 8+ persistence backends and 6 message brokers.
Is this project actively maintained?
Yes. Orkes is the primary maintainer and offers an enterprise SaaS platform for Conductor across all major cloud providers.
Can Conductor scale to handle my workload?
Yes. Built at Netflix, battle-tested at internet scale. Conductor scales horizontally across multiple server instances to handle billions of workflow executions.
Does Conductor support durable execution?
Yes. Conductor pioneered durable execution patterns, ensuring workflows and durable agents complete reliably despite infrastructure failures or crashes. Every step is persisted and recoverable.
Can I replay a workflow after it completes or fails?
Yes. Conductor preserves full execution history indefinitely. You can restart from the beginning, rerun from a specific task, or retry just the failed step — via API or UI.
Can Conductor orchestrate AI agents and LLMs?
Yes. Conductor provides native integration with 14+ LLM providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, and more), MCP tool calling, function calling, human-in-the-loop approval, and vector database integration for RAG.
Why does Conductor separate orchestration from code?
Coupling orchestration logic with business logic forces developers to maintain determinism constraints manually — no direct I/O, no system time, no randomness in workflow definitions. Conductor eliminates this entire class of bugs by making the orchestration layer deterministic by construction. Workers are plain code with zero framework constraints — write them in any language, use any library, call any API.
How does Conductor compare to other workflow engines?
Conductor is an open-source workflow engine with native LLM task types for 14+ providers, built-in MCP integration, durable execution, full replayability, and 7+ language SDKs.
Is Orkes Conductor compatible with Conductor OSS?
100% compatible. Orkes Conductor is built on top of Conductor OSS with full API and workflow compatibility.
Contributing
We welcome contributions from everyone!
- Report Issues: Open an issue on GitHub.
- Contribute code: Check out our Contribution Guide and good first issues.
- Improve docs: Help keep our documentation great.
Contributors
Roadmap
See the Conductor OSS Roadmap. Want to participate? Reach out.
License
Conductor is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.