Who is StackStorm?
StackStorm is an open-source event-driven automation platform for orchestrating workflows across infrastructure, applications, and services.
- Event-driven automation and workflow orchestration across IT systems and services.
- Rule-based engine for reacting to events from monitoring, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), chat, and cloud platforms.
- Extensible integration model using reusable automation packs for third-party tools and APIs.
- Support for Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) style automation, including configuration and deployment workflows.
- Enterprise-focused features such as role-based access controls, audit trails, and centralized management.
Show more
More About StackStorm
StackStorm is positioned as an event-driven automation and orchestration platform (cloud DevOps / IT automation) used to connect disparate systems, tools, and services through rules, workflows, and integrations. It is commonly adopted in enterprise and service provider environments where operations teams seek to standardize runbooks, reduce manual steps, and coordinate responses to events across infrastructure, applications, and cloud resources.
The platform is built around an event-driven architecture in which external systems emit events that StackStorm consumes through sensors. A rules engine evaluates those events against user-defined conditions and triggers actions or workflows. Workflows are typically described in a declarative format and can model multi-step operational tasks, including conditional logic, parallel execution, and error handling. This approach allows organizations to encode operational procedures as version-controlled artifacts that can align with IaC and GitOps practices.
StackStorm exposes a pluggable integration framework based on automation packs, which group sensors, actions, and rules for particular tools or platforms. These packs enable integration with monitoring systems, ticketing platforms, CI/CD pipelines, cloud providers, chat tools, and configuration management systems, among others. By using packs, enterprises can assemble cross-tool workflows such as automated incident response, provisioning, remediation, or notification routing without writing custom glue code for every integration.
The platform provides APIs and a web-based user interface for managing rules, workflows, and executions, as well as command-line tooling for operators. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and audit logging support governance and compliance requirements by defining which users or teams can run particular actions and by recording activity for later review. These capabilities position StackStorm for use in regulated or large-scale IT environments where controlled automation and traceability are necessary.
From a technology standpoint, StackStorm interacts with a wide range of protocols and interfaces, including Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs, message queues, Secure Shell (SSH), and various cloud service SDKs, as exposed through its integration packs. In marketplace and directory taxonomies, StackStorm aligns with categories such as runbook automation, IT process automation, EDO, and cloud DevOps tooling, serving as a central automation layer that connects monitoring, ITSM, CI/CD, and infrastructure platforms.
Our description of StackStorm. Updated December 2025.
