Get started with me & Kestra.io

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Guess who got a new job and is going to take you along the onboarding and learning journey? Me! 🤗

I’m returning to my DevRel roots as a Developer Advocate at Kestra.io, helping expand into the US market. I’m excited to learn and share publicly again, and to meet many of you in person at events. It’s great to be back connecting directly with the developer community.

What is Kestra?

Kestra is a declarative workflow‑orchestration platform that embraces the everything‑as‑code paradigm while still offering a friendly experience for “config‑only” users.

• YAML‑first: Write workflows as YAML (code).
• No‑code UI: Modify the YAML through a visual editor.
• Topology view: See an editable diagram side‑by‑side with the code.

This combination lets you switch between code and visual editing whenever you prefer, giving you the flexibility of both worlds.

Editions

Getting Started with Kestra OSS

The quickest way to try Kestra is with Docker Compose. Make sure Docker is installed (Docker Compose ships with Docker).

Run Kestra locally

docker run --pull=always --rm -it \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  --user=root \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /tmp:/tmp \
  kestra/kestra:latest server local

Open your browser and navigate to .

Note: Check the documentation for whether you need a persistent database backend. For simple experiments, the default in‑memory store is sufficient.

Exploring Kestra

1. Follow the quick‑start guide – it walks you through creating your first flow.
2. Visit the Blueprints – after a tutorial or two, explore community‑provided templates.
3. Build your own flow – leverage the many community plugins to integrate with external systems.

I’m currently working on a flow that aggregates my daily/weekly activities across various tools so I can generate a concise summary. You’ll see a work‑in‑progress screenshot in the editor (👀).

Thoughts on Orchestration

I suspect the term “orchestration” hasn’t fully resonated across all tech domains yet. Many of us recognize that disparate systems generate data everywhere, and combining them can unlock powerful solutions. Orchestration is the glue that makes these systems talk to each other to achieve a unified goal.

• DevOps teams often need orchestration to spin up clusters from multiple services.
• AI practitioners orchestrate data pipelines from several sources to feed models.

I plan to write more on this topic, but I’d love to hear your definition of an orchestrator, when you first learned about it, and how you decide to use one. Drop a comment and let’s discuss!

Join the Journey

I’ll be digging deeper into Kestra and sharing more tutorials. Let me know what you’re building, and feel free to reach out with questions or ideas. It’s good to be back. 💜