Channels - the nextflow podcast

About Channels - the nextflow podcast

Nextflow is the leading workflow orchestrator for bioinformaticians, data scientists, and professionals in computational biology and genetics. Stay informed with the latest updates, expert interviews, and insights from the Nextflow ecosystem with The Nextflow Podcast, by Seqera. Follow us on Twitter @nextflowio and YouTube @Nextflow.

Publisher

Seqera

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Mar 2021

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

58 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Episode 58: Writing Nextflow plugins in 2026

   In this episode, Phil is joined by Ben Sherman, Jon Manning and Rike Hanssen to take a fresh look at Nextflow plugins, two years on from the plugin walkthrough in episode 35. They cover what plugins are for: sharing reusable functions across pipelines, hooking into workflow events with observers (e.g., nf-slack notifications for nf-core full-size tests, or carbon footprint tracking with nf-co2footprint), and building custom executors and file systems. Ben explains what changed in Nextflow 25.10: the new nextflow plugin create command to scaffold a project, far less Gradle boilerplate, make install for local testing, and make release to publish to the plugin registry at registry.nextflow.io, with a one-time approval for the plugin name. Older Nextflow versions still read the legacy JSON index, which the registry keeps updated for plugins that support them. Rike demos nf-emoji, her first plugin, with themed emoji progress bars, special-day countdowns and optional terminal confetti, and talks about using AI to write tests once she knew her way around the code. Ben explains how custom config scopes let the Nextflow language server validate plugin settings. Jon introduces the new plugin development side quest at training.nextflow.io, covering scaffolding, custom functions, trace observers, testing and config scopes. The episode wraps up with how plugin name claims are reviewed, the expectation that community plugins are open source, and options for distributing private plugins internally. 00:00 Podcast Episode 58 - Plugins 00:09 Introduction 01:01 Welcome to our guests 01:48 An introduction to plugins 06:14 Common plugin use cases 08:25 What's new in Nextflow plugins since 2024 17:11 Demo: Rike's NF-emoji plugin 30:23 Global installs & custom config scopes 33:30 The new plugin training material 42:34 Publishing and approving plugins 47:50 Closing thoughts

2. 

   16 Mar 2026

   Episode 57: Pipeline chaining, meta pipelines and automation (Part 2 of 2)

   In episode 57 (March 2026), Phil is joined by Edmund Miller and Ben Sherman to discuss how recent and upcoming Nextflow language changes can make pipeline chaining and meta pipelines easier. The episode was split into two parts: this first part surveyed current solutions, listen to episode 56 to check that out. In this episode we focus on defining workflow “contracts” through clearer inputs (typed params in Nextflow 25.10 and proposed record types, including streamlined sample sheet/record ingestion from CSV/JSON/YAML or queries) and clearer outputs (workflow outputs leaving preview in 25.10, adding an entry-workflow publish section and an output block to publish channels, route files, and serialize channel contents into JSON/CSV/YAML index files). We discuss reducing direct params access inside modules, using records to pass validated param bundles, generating/leveraging nextflow_schema.json for external tooling like Seqera Platform to validate chains, exploring glue pipelines, command-line piping of Nextflow runs, and how lineage IDs could support more data-centric, automated workflows. 00:00 Welcome 01:18 Nextflow language 02:09 Inputs and outputs 04:14 Streamlining sample sheet parsing 07:47 Placement of params 12:03 Sharing workflows 14:09 Outputs 20:04 Workflow ouputs to chain pipelines 25:56 Publishing channels 32:03 Schema 34:37 Schema + pipeline chaining 37:13 Piping pipelines 41:20 Nextflow Lineage 45:56 Conclusion and wrap-up

3. 

   2 Mar 2026

   Episode 56: Pipeline chaining, meta pipelines and automation (Part 1 of 2)

   Episode 56 of The Nextflow Podcast (March 2026) focuses on pipeline chaining and meta pipelines in Nextflow, with guests Ben Sherman and Edmund Miller. The episode was split into two parts: this first part surveys current solutions, while part two will cover future Nextflow language changes. The discussion defines meta pipelines as importing pipelines (e.g., nf-core/rnaseq) as subworkflows to form one DAG with parallelization and full resume, versus pipeline chaining using external orchestration to run Pipeline A then feed outputs to Pipeline B. They cover obstacles to meta pipelines in nf-core, including tooling, parameter/config clashes, and tight coupling of pipeline code and configuration. Current chaining approaches include bash/Makefiles, Python, Seqera Platform APIs, nf-cascade (running Nextflow inside Nextflow), wrapping Nextflow with Snakemake, and automation/orchestration tools like Node-RED, n8n, Dagster, and Temporal, including event-driven patterns on AWS. 00:00 Nextflow Podcast, Episode 56 00:08 Welcome 01:42 Introduction to meta pipelines and pipeline chaining 05:01 What makes importing pipelines difficult? 06:55 CLI tooling to import pipelines 09:13 Overlapping config scopes 10:53 Subworkflows or pipelines? 12:38 Pipeline chaining 13:36 nf-cascade 16:42 Nextflow in Snakemake 22:26 Automating Nextflow runs 24:10 Event-driven bioinformatics 26:32 Node-RED + Seqera 30:40 Node-RED flexibility 33:45 Glue code 35:31 Other automation frameworks 37:02 Bioinformatics pipelines vs. ETL workflows 38:56 Tangent: What makes Nextflow special 44:11 Dagster automation demo 47:29 Temporal automation demo 51:13 Wrap up

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 58 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

83

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

81

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.