Skip to main content

Pipeline Primitives

The Four Primitives​

Every step in a Kimitsu pipeline is exactly one of:

  1. Transform: Deterministic data shaping (JMESPath).
  2. Agent: Reasoning and synthesis (LLM).
  3. Webhook: Outbound integration (HTTP POST).
  4. Workflow: Sub-pipeline composition.

See Variables for the template syntax and how env vars, params, and secrets are declared and threaded through the pipeline.

Agent Steps​

Agents are the central intelligence of Kimitsu. They are the only primitive allowed to make LLM calls.

- id: triage
  agent: "./agents/triage.agent.yaml" # identity
  params:                             # flat map of inputs for the agent
    message: "{{ params.message }}"
    team: "billing"
  depends_on: [other_step]            # explicit flow dependency
  model:                              # runtime overrides (optional)
    group: frontier
    max_tokens: 1024

Prompt Separation​

  • prompt.system: Static only. No {{ }} templates.
  • prompt.user: Dynamic. Supports full {{ }} interpolation.

Transform Steps​

Transforms are deterministic and execute directly in the orchestrator. See Transforms for all six operations and a complete chained example.

- id: cleanup
  transform:
    ops:
      - filter:
          expr: "confidence > `0.5`"          # keep high-confidence items
      - sort:
          field: "confidence"
          order: "desc"                        # highest confidence first
      - map:
          expr: "{title: title, score: confidence}" # project to final shape

Webhook Steps​

Webhooks integrate Kimitsu with the outside world.

- id: alert
  webhook:
    url: "{{ env.SLACK_URL }}"       # Root secret resolution
    method: POST
    body:
      status: "critical"
      data: "{{ step.triage.results }}"

Agent Steps — Fanout​

Agent steps support a for_each block that runs the step once per array element, concurrently. See Fanout (for_each) for syntax, output shape, and a worked example.

Workflow Steps​

Workflows allow for recursive nesting and modular pipelines.

- id: sub-process
  workflow: "./sub/validator.workflow.yaml"
  input:                              # maps parent data to child params
    source: "{{ step.parse.output }}"
  webhooks: execute                   # opt-in to child webhooks

Revised April 2026