metaflow-windmill

Run any Metaflow flow on Windmill without rewriting your pipeline.

The problem

Windmill is a powerful open-source orchestrator, but its native scripting model has no concept of Metaflow steps, data artifacts, or retry semantics. You either maintain two separate codebases — one for Metaflow development and one for Windmill production — or you lose Metaflow's versioning, lineage, and @retry guarantees entirely. There is no off-the-shelf bridge that compiles a Metaflow flow into a Windmill workflow while preserving all of its runtime behavior.

Quick start

pip install metaflow-windmill
python flow.py windmill create --windmill-host http://localhost:8000 --windmill-token $TOKEN
python flow.py windmill trigger --windmill-host http://localhost:8000 --windmill-token $TOKEN
# Deploying HelloFlow...
# Flow deployed successfully to Windmill.
# Job started: http://localhost:8000/run/01927f3a-...?workspace=admins

Install

pip install metaflow-windmill

From source:

git clone https://github.com/npow/metaflow-windmill
cd metaflow-windmill
pip install -e .

Usage

Deploy and trigger in one step:

python flow.py windmill run \
  --windmill-host http://localhost:8000 \
  --windmill-token $TOKEN \
  --windmill-workspace admins
# Compiling HelloFlow...
# Flow deployed successfully to Windmill.
# Triggering execution...
# Job started: http://localhost:8000/run/01927f3a-...?workspace=admins
# Job is running...
# Job 01927f3a-... completed successfully.

Deploy once, trigger many times with parameters:

python flow.py windmill create --windmill-token $TOKEN
python flow.py windmill trigger --windmill-token $TOKEN \
  --run-param message=hello --run-param iterations=5

Programmatic API:

from metaflow import Deployer

with Deployer("flow.py") as d:
    df = d.windmill().create(
        windmill_host="http://localhost:8000",
        windmill_token="my-token",
    )
    run = df.trigger(message="hello")
    print(run.status)          # RUNNING / SUCCEEDED / FAILED
    print(run.windmill_ui)     # http://localhost:8000/run/<job-id>?workspace=admins
    print(run.run.successful)  # True

How it works

Each Metaflow step becomes a Windmill flow module that runs a bash script. The bash script calls python flow.py step <step_name> with --run-id, --task-id, and --retry-count derived from Windmill's native WM_FLOW_RETRY_COUNT environment variable. Branch/join steps compile to Windmill branchall modules; foreach steps compile to forloopflow modules with a configurable max_workers concurrency limit. The Metaflow run ID is pre-computed before triggering and threaded through every step so Metaflow's local datastore and the Windmill job ID stay in sync.

Supported graph patterns:

For @condition splits, the split step emits {"branch": "<step_name>"} to stdout after running. The subsequent branchone module uses results.<split_step>.branch === '<step_name>' as the predicate so Windmill routes to the correct branch at runtime.

@parallel and @batch are not supported — Windmill runs each step as a local subprocess on the worker.

Configuration

Development

git clone https://github.com/npow/metaflow-windmill
cd metaflow-windmill
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/

Integration tests require a running Windmill instance:

docker compose up -d
pytest tests/ -m integration

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.