Introduction
Conveyor CI
Conveyor CI is an open-source, lightweight, embeddable engine for building distributed CI/CD systems.
It provides a modular toolkit of APIs, SDKs, drivers, and a Go-based runtime so you can build your own CI/CD platform without reinventing execution, event handling, scaling, and observability.
What Conveyor CI is and is not
What it is
- An embeddable CI/CD engine you can integrate into your platform or run standalone.
- Lightweight, Go-based single-binary runtime with built-in observability.
- Event-driven (powered by NATS JetStream + etcd) for dynamic, responsive execution.
- Ideal for self-hosted, air-gapped, or custom platform environments.
What it is not
- Not a hosted SaaS like GitHub Actions — you deploy and manage it.
- Not Kubernetes-dependent — it runs without clusters or CRDs.
- Not a plugin-heavy monolith like Jenkins — it’s an engine, not a marketplace. .
- Not a visual pipeline-builder or fully-fledged pipeline solution out of the box — it provides the engine to build pipelines, not a complete pre-built CI/CD platform
Key Features
- Embeddable Engine: Run pipelines anywhere — VMs, containers, or edge devices.
- API-first & SDK-ready: Programmatically control pipelines, triggers, and drivers.
- Built-in Observability: Metrics, logging, and tracing integrated out-of-the-box.
- Declarative Pipelines: Define workflows using flexible YAML or programmatic APIs.
- Event-driven Architecture: Real-time, responsive execution across distributed systems.
- Horizontal Scaling: Scale drivers and workloads effortlessly with minimal setup.
- Custom Drivers: Execute tasks via Docker, SSH, systemd, or custom runtimes.
Installation
Conveyor CI is distributed as an OCI container and available on Docker Hub. and also available as a binary. You can install it by running this command.
curl -fsSL conveyor.open.ug/install | sh
Use Cases
Conveyor CI is ideal for teams and organizations that need a flexible, embeddable CI/CD engine to power custom platforms or workflows:
- Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs): Integrate CI/CD into your own developer platform with full control over pipelines and drivers.
- Custom Mobile App CI/CD: Build a specialized CI/CD platform tailored for mobile app development, including custom workflows for build, test, and release.
- Enterprise Automation: Automate internal workflows that go beyond standard software pipelines, e.g., deployment orchestration or data pipelines.
- Self-hosted / Air-gapped environments: Run pipelines fully within your infrastructure without relying on external CI/CD SaaS providers.
- Edge / IoT Deployments: Execute pipelines on distributed nodes or remote environments where lightweight, embeddable execution is required.
- Experimentation and Innovation: Quickly prototype new CI/CD workflows or custom pipeline behaviors using Conveyor’s API and driver model.
Why Conveyor CI?
Compared to other CI/CD tools:
| Feature / Tool | Conveyor CI | GitHub Actions | Jenkins | Argo CD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Embeddable | ✔ | x | ⚠️ Possible | x |
| Kubernetes Agnostic | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | x |
| API-first | ✔ | ⚠️ Partial | ⚠️ Partial | ✔ |
| Self-hosted / Air-gapped | ✔ | x | ✔ | ⚠️ Limited |
| Observability Built-in | ✔ | ⚠️ Partial | ⚠️ Plugin-dependent | ✔ |
| Best Use Case | Build custom CI/CD platform, Edge, on-prem | Repo workflows, SaaS convenience | Highly custom automation | GitOps deployments on Kubernetes |
Conveyor CI is engine-first, built for platform teams and technical operators who want full control without vendor lock-in or heavy dependencies.
License
Apache License 2.0, see LICENSE.
