What it is
A machine is a YAML definition. It contains jobs, and it defines the control flow between them: which jobs run, in what order and under what conditions. A job is a JavaScript script or another machine.
# title.yaml
flow: fetch-title
input: { url: string }
stages:
get_title:
job:
script: ./fetch-title.js
input: { url: "${input.url}" }
allow: [net:example.com]
output: ${stages.get_title.output}// fetch-title.js
const page = http.get(input.url)
const title = html.parse(page.body).find("title").text
return { url: input.url, title }corbie test title.yaml --input '{"url": "https://example.com"}' output: {"title":"Example Domain","url":"https://example.com"}
This machine is a flow named fetch-title. It has one stage, get_title, and the stage has one job, which is a script. Corbie provides input, http and html to the script.
There are three types of machine.
flowstages that run in dependency order, in parallel, and can stream items from one stage to the next
statechartstates, with transitions on events and timers
agentan AI model that calls tools in a loop until it answers
In a flow each stage has a job, in a statechart a state can have one, and in an agent each tool is one.
A job can be a machine, so the three types nest. A statechart state can run a flow, and an agent's tool can be a flow or another agent.
Why use it
- Permissions are enforced on every script. A script has no access to files, the network or other programs except what its
allow:list grants. - Flows and statecharts are predictable, agents are dynamic, and each can run the others.
- It needs no server and no database. It is one binary and a directory, and the same definitions run on several computers or as serverless functions.
How it runs
Corbie is one binary that runs as three kinds of process. A controller executes machine definitions, runners execute scripts, and a client submits a machine and reads its result. They communicate only by writing files to one shared store, which is a directory or an S3 bucket. corbie test runs all three in one process.
Next: First machine builds and runs the example above.