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The LittleHorse Platform

LittleHorse is a platform for integration, microservice orchestration, and agents all based on the open-source LittleHorse Kernel. LittleHorse allows you to:

  • Orchestrate and execute distributed processes and workflows using the LittleHorse Kernel.
  • Capture events and respond in real-time using LittleHorse Connect.
  • Secure your applications and authorize your users to complete User Tasks with Pony ID.

The LittleHorse Platform allows you to focus on your business logic rather than the complex plumbing required to build reliable systems. Furthermore, LittleHorse is designed to maximize the availability of your data, giving you the ability to build real-time, responsive, and intelligent systems.

Platform Components​

The LittleHorse Platform components include:

The Kernel

A durable workflow engine for real-time apps, agents, and microservices in Java, Go, Python, and C#.

Open Source

Pony ID

A brokered Identity Solution based on OIDC for applications and workflows using the LittleHorse Kernel.

LittleHorse Connect

An API Gateway and Apache Kafka Connectors to responsively trigger workflows in the Kernel.

Open Source

All of the components of the LittleHorse Platform are a-la-carte and can be used on an as-needed basis. For example, the LittleHorse Server supports Java, Go, Python, and C# clients—you can use the LittleHorse Runtime Quarkus extensions to develop against the LittleHorse Server, you can write your own Spring Boot app, or you can use vanilla GoLang/Python.

Similarly, many of our users get value out of the LittleHorse Kernel without using LittleHorse Connect or Pony ID.

A Note From Our Founder​

Dear Fellow Engineer,

It is a great privilege to work side-by-side with my father—and an amazing team of people across the United States and Ecuador—as we build LittleHorse.

My father's previous company revolutionized computing by standardizing TCP/IP and Unix and inventing SPARC, NFS, ZFS, Solaris, and Java (also, wasn't "The Network Is the Computer" the seed of the Cloud?). When we started the LittleHorse project, we wanted to make it as easy to program a vast network of services, people, and computers (i.e. the mess that SUN created 😉) as it is to program a single computer like I did in my high school Computer Science class.

That's a tall ask, and we have a long way to go before we can claim to have accomplished that goal. But I hope that, once you run a few workflows on LittleHorse, you will also start to see it as a distributed JVM: it's an environment that lets you write programs (WfSpecs) and run them (WfRuns). The only difference is that a WfSpec can involve taking actions on dozens of different services (whether microservices, legacy systems, external API's, or even people).

We are grateful that you're here and we look forward to working with you and learning from your experiences. I would love to hear from you on Slack!

Gratefully,
Colt McNealy