Gateway and Service Orchestration
Gateway: Expose workflows as APIs or MCP tools
Gateway lets applications and AI agents call a workflow. You group routes under a service, link each route to a workflow, and set the authentication for the service. When a request arrives, Conductor runs the workflow and returns its output. Retries, branching, human steps and the full execution history come with the workflow.
A Gateway service is one of two types:
- API Gateway: Exposes a workflow as APIs that applications and internal services call.
- MCP Gateway: Exposes a workflow as MCP tools that AI agents discover and call.
Service Orchestration: Call external services
Workflows call external HTTP and gRPC services through Remote Services. You register a service once, with its address, authentication and endpoints. Workflows then pick a call from the catalog instead of repeating URLs and headers. You can also register schemas and add a circuit breaker.
Which one do I need
- An application or agent should trigger a workflow: Gateway, with an API or MCP service.
- A workflow should call an external HTTP or gRPC service from several places: Remote Services.
- A workflow makes a one-off external call: Use an HTTP task directly.