Getting started with AkôFlow
AkôFlow helps you define a scientific workflow, decide where its activities run, and inspect what happened. A workflow describes activities and their data dependencies. AkôFlow can compare plans, run a selected plan, and keep its results and provenance together.
The simplest place to begin is a local simulation. It lets you follow a workflow from definition to results without access to a cluster or cloud account.
What can I do today?
- Simulate a workflow locally with SimGrid and inspect activity and transfer results.
- Run on connected infrastructure using the documented Kubernetes or HPC/SLURM paths, after configuring that environment.
- Explore cloud integration with the limits described in the cloud support matrix. AWS EC2 discovery and provisioning are not implemented.
These paths have different prerequisites and levels of validation. Consult the relevant guide before using a real environment.
I want to run AkôFlow for the first time
- Install AkôFlow Desktop and confirm that it connects.
- Tour the interface to find workflows, plans, runs, and results.
- If you have the development stack and API credentials, run the checked-in SimGrid example. It verifies three activities and two transfers.
The SimGrid tutorial currently uses repository files and the API. It is not a Desktop-only first-run tutorial. A complete Desktop walkthrough remains to be validated and documented.
I already have AkôFlow running
| Goal | Continue with |
|---|---|
| Define or import an activity DAG | Workflow definitions |
| Generate PRISM or HEFT candidates, or place activities manually | Plan a workflow |
| Start a selected plan and inspect observed evidence | Execute and monitor a workflow |
| Configure simulated or connected infrastructure | Environments |
| Limit the resources and network offered to planning | Execution scopes and network topologies |
| Reproduce a complete example | Workflow Showcase |
| Query lineage, evidence, or audit records | Provenance and audit |
I am connecting infrastructure
Choose the guide for the actual target. Provider and runtime support are not interchangeable.
- SimGrid first run: deterministic local simulation.
- Kubernetes infrastructure: connect a cluster and execute container activities as Jobs.
- HPC and SLURM: login nodes, partitions, shared storage, SSH proxies, and batch execution.
- Google Cloud: service-account credentials, catalog discovery, pricing, and Terraform provisioning.
- AWS: S3 and S3-compatible data movement. AkôFlow v1.0 does not discover or provision EC2 capacity.
Review the cloud support matrix before designing a cloud deployment.
I am automating through the API
Read the API overview for the base URL, authentication, content types, asynchronous operations, error envelope, and generated endpoint index. Use the workflow specification for portable YAML authoring.
The Desktop and HTTP API operate on the same persisted records. The API is preferable for repeatable experiments and integrations; Desktop is preferable for inspecting infrastructure, candidate Gantt charts, live activity state, and plan-versus-observed evidence.
I want to understand the results
Start with Core concepts for workflow, environment, plan, run, artifacts, and provenance. A plan describes a proposed execution; a run records the observed one. For implementation details, see Architecture internals.
When something fails
Use Troubleshooting for daemon readiness, authentication, Docker and BuildKit checks, connection failures, and diagnostic collection. For remote targets, validate credentials and the environment connection before debugging the workflow itself.