Quick Start

This page takes you from nothing to a running workflow in three stages: run the demo, drive it from a terminal, then start your own project.

1. Run the demo

You need Rust 1.94+, Node 22+ with pnpm for the dashboard, and, for agent steps, the Claude Code CLI.

git clone https://gitlab.com/ThomasTartrau/ironflow.git
cd ironflow

Build the dashboard first: the API server embeds ironflow-dashboard/dist/ when it compiles.

(cd ironflow-dashboard && pnpm install && pnpm build)

Start the API server. It serves the REST API and the dashboard on http://localhost:3000, with a dozen example workflows already registered:

IRONFLOW_ENV=development cargo run -p ironflow-example-server

IRONFLOW_ENV=development lets the server boot without secrets: it generates them and logs the worker token (start workers with WORKER_TOKEN=...).

In a second terminal, start a worker. The server stores runs; the worker is the process that executes them.

WORKER_TOKEN=<token from the server log> cargo run -p ironflow-example-worker

Open http://localhost:3000, create an account, open deploy-approval and click Run. The run executes its steps, then stops on an approval gate: approve it and the last step runs.

The example server keeps runs in memory, so they are gone when it stops. See Running the Server to use Postgres.

2. Drive it from a terminal

Create an API key in the dashboard, under API keys, then:

cargo install ironflow-cli

export IRONFLOW_URL=http://localhost:3000
export IRONFLOW_API_KEY=irfl_...

ironflow-cli workflow list
ironflow-cli run create ci-pipeline
ironflow-cli logs <run-id>

The CLI, the Rust SDK and the MCP server are described in Interfaces.

3. Start your own project

A project has three parts: a library with your workflows, a server binary and a worker binary. Installation shows the layout, and the example server and worker are the code to start from.

With Claude Code, the Ironflow plugin scaffolds that project for you with /ironflow setup.

Then write your first workflow with Writing a Workflow.