Introduction

KB Labs is an automation platform built on an open-source core. It lets you orchestrate workflows, build plugins, and ship CI/CD pipelines — without locking yourself into a single vendor.

Philosophy: Every dependency in KB Labs is replaceable. You own your workflows. You own your data.

What you can build

KB Labs is designed for teams that need automation with actual control:

Workflow orchestration — Chain steps, handle retries, branch on conditions
Plugin system — Write handlers in TypeScript, deploy them as isolated plugins
CI/CD pipelines — Predictable release flows with rollback support
State Broker — Distributed key-value state across services

How it works

At its core, KB Labs runs a workflow engine that executes step graphs. Each step calls a plugin handler — a function you write and deploy. The engine handles:

Scheduling and queueing
Retry logic and timeouts
State persistence between steps
Event emission for observability

Architecture overview

Your workflow YAML
      ↓
  Workflow engine (parses, schedules)
      ↓
  Plugin system (resolves handlers)
      ↓
  Your handler code (runs isolated)
      ↓
  State Broker (persists results)

Next steps

Installation — Set up the CLI and your first workspace
First workflow — Build and run a real workflow in 5 minutes
Plugin System — Understand the plugin architecture