Getting Started

Prerequisites

1. Install Nix:

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

2. Create the nix-workflow store directory:

# 1777: world-writable with sticky bit. Any user can create files,
# but only the owner of a file can delete or modify it (same as /tmp).
sudo mkdir -m 1777 -p /nix-workflow

Create a workflow

Create an experiment.nix:

let
  nw-src = builtins.fetchTarball
    "https://github.com/gzbfgjf2/nix-workflow/archive/main.tar.gz";
  nw = import nw-src;
  output = nw.lib.output;
  pkgs = import (import "${nw-src}/npins")."nixos-25.11" {};

  build_data_bin = import "${nw-src}/example/showcase/build-data" { inherit pkgs; };
  train_bin = import "${nw-src}/example/showcase/train" { inherit pkgs; };
  inference_bin = import "${nw-src}/example/showcase/inference" { inherit pkgs; };
  evaluate_bin = import "${nw-src}/example/showcase/evaluate" { inherit pkgs; };
  compare_bin = import "${nw-src}/example/showcase/compare" { inherit pkgs; };
in
rec {
  dataset = output ''
    ${build_data_bin}/bin/build-data --name=demo --samples=500 --seed=42
  '';

  model_small = output ''
    ${train_bin}/bin/train
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
    --epochs=5 --lr=0.01 --batch-size=128
  '';

  model_base = output ''
    ${train_bin}/bin/train
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
    --epochs=10 --lr=0.001 --batch-size=32
  '';

  model_large = output ''
    ${train_bin}/bin/train
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
    --epochs=50 --lr=0.0001 --batch-size=64 --seed=123
  '';

  predict_small = output ''
    ${inference_bin}/bin/inference
    --model=${model_small}/model.json
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  predict_base = output ''
    ${inference_bin}/bin/inference
    --model=${model_base}/model.json
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  predict_large = output ''
    ${inference_bin}/bin/inference
    --model=${model_large}/model.json
    --data=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  eval_small = output ''
    ${evaluate_bin}/bin/evaluate
    --predictions=${predict_small}/predictions.csv
    --ground-truth=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  eval_base = output ''
    ${evaluate_bin}/bin/evaluate
    --predictions=${predict_base}/predictions.csv
    --ground-truth=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  eval_large = output ''
    ${evaluate_bin}/bin/evaluate
    --predictions=${predict_large}/predictions.csv
    --ground-truth=${dataset}/data.csv
  '';

  comparison = output ''
    ${compare_bin}/bin/compare
    --result=${eval_small}
    --result=${eval_base}
    --result=${eval_large}
  '';
}

Run the pipeline

nix-shell https://github.com/gzbfgjf2/nix-workflow/archive/main.tar.gz \
-A shell --run "nw run experiment.nix"

Visualize

nix-shell https://github.com/gzbfgjf2/nix-workflow/archive/main.tar.gz \
-A shell --run "nw-visual experiment.nix"