Common Workflow Language (CWL) is an open standard for describing how to run command line tools and connect them to create workflows.

Tools and workflows described using CWL are portable across a variety of platforms that support the CWL standards. Using CWL, it is easy to scale complex data analysis and machine learning workflows from a single developer's laptop up to massively parallel cluster, cloud and high performance computing environments.

OPEN AND FREE Free and Open Icon - an open circular lock composed of a circle, keyhole and a open latch

Free and open standards

COMMUNITY FIRST Community icon four people connected via a circle

Community is a core principle of the CWL Project

INTEROPERABILITY AND PORTABILITY Interoperability icon - a triangle composed of arrows, with a triangle, square, and circle as the 3 points

Portable and interoperable across a variety of software and deployment environments

VENDOR NEUTRALITY Vendor Neutrality icon - an evenly weighted mechanical scale

Developed by a multi-vendor working group of organizations and individuals/contributors

REUSABILITY AND REPRODUCIBILITY Reusability icon - a Cog with a circular arrow, spinning counter-clockwise inside

Enables scientists to reuse and reproduce their data analysis workflows

PARALLELIZATION AND SCALE Data icon - a singular data node, which then splits into 3 separate nodes

Scalable from workstations to cluster, cloud, and high performance computing (HPC environments

ECOSYSTEM SUPPORT Ecosystem icon - a collection of linked nodes within a circle (resembling a planet

Supported by an ecosystem of tools, libraries, and editor plugins

TRANSPARENT GOVERNANCE Transparent Governance icon - a crowd of 5 people stand together, as if at a town hall meeting

Designed with an open and transparent governance

Some Users of CWL §