> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://ai.aidalinfo.fr/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Workflows

> Overview of AI Kit workflows and their main capabilities.

Workflows orchestrate typed sequences of steps inspired by Mastra. Each step can validate input/output schemas, share context, and emit real-time events to observe execution.

## Why workflows?

* Structure business processes into testable, reusable steps.
* Enrich AI scenarios with strict validation, shared metadata, and cancellation through `AbortSignal`.
* Monitor execution with `run.watch()` or `run.stream()` to build live dashboards.
* Introduce human collaboration or controlled parallelism with minimal effort.

## Must-read guides

* [`Introduction`](/en/workflows/introduction) – create your first steps and run a full workflow.
* [`Conditional branches`](/en/workflows/branches) – route execution according to business rules.
* [`While loops`](/en/workflows/while) – repeat a step until a predicate is satisfied.
* [`Parallel & foreach`](/en/workflows/parallel) – process collections and run tasks concurrently.
* [`Human steps`](/en/workflows/human-steps) – put a human in the loop and manage the request → resume cycle.
* [`Telemetry`](/en/workflows/telemetry) – instrument runs with OpenTelemetry and Langfuse.

## Core concepts

### Typed steps

```ts theme={null}
import { createStep } from "@ai_kit/core";
import { z } from "zod";

export const fetchWeather = createStep({
  id: "fetch-weather",
  description: "Fetch current weather",
  inputSchema: z.object({ city: z.string().min(1) }),
  handler: async ({ input, signal }) => {
    if (signal.aborted) throw new Error("Request aborted");
    return { forecast: `Sunny in ${input.city}` };
  },
});
```

Clone a step with `cloneStep` when you want to reuse the same handler:

```ts theme={null}
import { cloneStep } from "@ai_kit/core";

export const fetchWeatherCopy = cloneStep(fetchWeather, {
  id: "fetch-weather-copy",
  description: "Weather for another city",
});
```

### Context & events

Each run shares metadata accessible via `context.getMetadata()` and mutable through `context.updateMetadata()`. The `context.store` map lets you keep temporary references.

```ts theme={null}
const notifyTeam = createStep({
  id: "notify-team",
  handler: async ({ context }) => {
    context.emit({ type: "notification", data: { channel: "slack" } });
    return { status: "sent" };
  },
});
```

### Instrumentation

* `workflow.createRun()` instantiates a reusable run.
* `run.watch(listener)` listens to events (`workflow:start`, `step:success`, `step:event`, …).
* `run.stream()` returns an async iterator to consume events live.
* `run.cancel()` aborts execution through the underlying `AbortSignal`.

### Best practices

* Declare explicit schemas to catch inconsistencies early.
* Compose short, testable steps with clear descriptions.
* Emit business events to feed your monitoring and audit trails.
* Combine workflows with agents to model richer decision-making loops.