translation/source/documents/course/04-workflows/01-introduction-to-workflows.md

Introduction to Workflows

Welcome to the fourth lesson of the Mastra course! In this lesson, you'll learn about Mastra Workflows - a powerful way to orchestrate complex sequences of operations.

What are Workflows?

Workflows in Mastra let you chain together multiple operations in a predictable, type-safe manner. Think of them as a recipe that breaks down complex tasks into smaller, manageable steps.

Instead of writing one big function that does everything, workflows let you:

• Break complex operations into smaller, reusable steps
• Define clear inputs and outputs for each step
• Chain steps together with automatic data validation
• Handle errors gracefully at each step

Simple Example

Without workflows, you might write:

async function processContent(text: string) {
  // All logic in one function - hard to test and reuse
  const validated = validateText(text);
  const enhanced = enhanceText(validated);
  const summarized = summarizeText(enhanced);
  return summarized;
}

With workflows, the same logic becomes modular and reusable with tracing built in at every step.

export const contentWorkflow = createWorkflow({...})
  .then(validateStep)
  .then(enhanceStep)
  .then(summarizeStep)
  .commit();

What You'll Build

In this lesson, you'll create a content processing workflow that validates, enhances, and summarizes text content using multiple connected steps.

Let's start by understanding the basic building blocks!