Your First Pipeline

Create a new pipeline

Navigate to Pipelines in the sidebar and click New Pipeline.

Name and configure

Give the pipeline a name (e.g., demo-pipeline) and select the environment where your agent is enrolled. Click Create.

You are now in the pipeline editor -- a drag-and-drop canvas with three panels:

• Left -- Component palette with all available sources, transforms, and sinks
• Center -- Canvas where you build the pipeline graph
• Right -- Detail panel for configuring the selected node

Add a source

In the component palette on the left, find Demo Logs under the Testing category (or type "demo" in the search box).

Drag it onto the canvas. A green source node appears. Click on it to open the detail panel on the right, and set the format to json. This generates fake JSON log events every second.

Add a transform

Search for Remap (VRL) in the component palette and drag it onto the canvas to the right of your source node.

Click the Remap node to open the detail panel. In the VRL Source editor, write a simple transformation:

.message = "processed: " + string!(.message)
.processed_at = now()

This prepends "processed: " to each log message and adds a timestamp field.

Add a sink

Search for Console in the component palette and drag it onto the canvas to the right of your transform node.

Click the Console node and set the encoding codec to json. The console sink prints events to Vector's stdout, which the agent captures and forwards to VectorFlow for viewing.

Connect the nodes

Draw connections between your components:

1. Hover over the output port (small circle on the right edge) of the Demo Logs source node
2. Click and drag a line to the input port (small circle on the left edge) of the Remap transform node
3. Release to create the connection
4. Repeat: connect the Remap output to the Console sink input

Your pipeline graph should now show: Demo Logs -> Remap (VRL) -> Console

Name your components

Each node has a Name field in the detail panel. By default, new components are named after their type (e.g., "Demo Logs"). You can rename them to something more descriptive like "Demo Source", "Add Timestamp", and "Debug Output".

Renaming a component only requires saving the pipeline -- it does not require a redeploy. The backend component ID is auto-generated and shown as a read-only field below the name.

Validate the pipeline

Click the Validate button (checkmark icon) in the toolbar at the top of the editor.

VectorFlow generates the Vector YAML configuration from your graph and sends it to Vector for validation. If everything is correct, you see a green "Pipeline is valid!" toast notification.

If validation fails, the error message tells you exactly which component has an issue. Fix the configuration and validate again.

Save the pipeline

Click the Save button in the toolbar (or press Cmd+S / Ctrl+S). This persists your pipeline graph to the database but does not deploy it yet.

Deploy

Click the Deploy button in the toolbar. The deploy dialog opens and shows:

• The target environment and how many agents are enrolled
• A validation check (the pipeline must be valid to deploy)
• A YAML diff comparing the new config against the previously deployed version (if any)
• A Deployment Reason field -- describe what changed and why

Enter a deployment reason (e.g., "Initial demo pipeline"), then click Publish to Agents.

VectorFlow publishes the pipeline configuration. Agents pick up the new config on their next poll cycle (default: 15 seconds).

Verify

Navigate to the Fleet page. You should see your agent with an Online status. The pipeline status shows as Running once Vector picks up the configuration.

Back in the pipeline editor, the toolbar shows a green Deployed badge. If you enabled metrics, you can see live event rates on the canvas edges.