TypeScript agents and workflows
How to use
Mastra.
Building TypeScript agents for open-ended tasks and typed, resumable workflows for controlled multistep processes, with shared memory, tracing, and evaluation.
Mastra is a Open-source TypeScript framework for AI agents, typed tools, graph workflows, memory, retrieval, evaluation, and observability. Building TypeScript agents for open-ended tasks and typed, resumable workflows for controlled multistep processes, with shared memory, tracing, and evaluation. This guide covers the whole path in one place: official access, a first session that produces something reviewable, the checks that make output trustworthy, and the permissions worth limiting before you connect real work.
AI should make the work easier to inspect. If the workflow removes the source, the owner, or the review step, redesign the workflow.
Access & setup
Find, install, and sign in to Mastra
Get into the official Mastra experience with the right account and a setup you understand.
- 01
Start at https://mastra.ai/ and confirm the domain before entering account or payment information.
- 02
Availability: Mastra is installed into a Node.js or TypeScript project and includes a local Studio for testing and inspection; it is not a standalone consumer desktop application.
- 03
A supported Node.js development environment, model-provider credentials, versioned source control, secure storage and secrets, approved tools and data, representative eval cases, and a deployment and observability plan.
- 04
Sign in with the account you intend to keep using, then review plan, data, notification, and permission settings.
- 05
Run one low-risk test task before connecting sensitive files, repositories, or workspace data.
- Use official download pages.
- Review permissions during setup.
- Keep installers and applications updated.
First session
Your first useful Mastra session
Learn the interaction loop using a small task with a clear outcome.
- 01
Define the user task, autonomy boundary, data class, model, tools, output schema, memory, workflow states, approvals, quality, safety, latency, cost, and rollback requirements.
- 02
Start with one narrowly scoped agent for open-ended reasoning or a deterministic workflow when steps and control flow are known, registering only the minimum typed tools.
- 03
Run locally in Studio with server-side secrets, representative and adversarial cases, bounded steps and tokens, observable tool calls, validated outputs, and no automatic consequential actions.
- 04
Review traces, eval scores, permissions, memory isolation, failures, resume behavior, latency, and cost, then pin dependencies, canary deployment, and retain a tested fallback.
- State the outcome before the background.
- Provide the real source material.
- Review the result before expanding the task.
Quality control
Check the quality of Mastra output
Establish that an autonomous run did the right thing, not merely that it finished.
- 01
Define what the run should achieve and what it must never touch before granting it a single tool.
- 02
Read the full execution trace: which tools were called, with what arguments, and in what order.
- 03
Verify the side effects directly in the target system rather than trusting the agent's own report of success.
- 04
Confirm failures surfaced as failures — a silent retry loop or a swallowed error is more dangerous than a crash.
- 05
Re-run the same task and compare: an agent that behaves differently across identical runs is not yet production-ready.
- Verify side effects in the system of record, not in the agent's summary.
- Require human approval for any irreversible or outward-facing action.
- Log every tool call so a run can be reconstructed afterwards.
Privacy & permissions
Use Mastra safely
Bound what an autonomous system can reach before you let it run unattended.
- 01
Enumerate every tool, credential, and system the agent can reach, and remove the ones it does not need.
- 02
Require explicit human approval for irreversible actions: sending, publishing, paying, deleting, or deploying.
- 03
Run against non-production data until behaviour is predictable across repeated runs.
- 04
Set hard limits on spend, iterations, and runtime so a failure loop cannot run unbounded.
- 05
Treat anything the agent reads from the web or a document as data, never as instructions it may follow.
- Typed schemas validate structure, not truth, authorization, or safe intent. Agents can loop or misuse tools, and workflows can replay or resume with stale state. Treat prompts, memory, MCP content, tool arguments, and resume payloads as untrusted; authorize outside the model, make side effects idempotent, cap requests and cost, isolate tenants, protect snapshots and traces, and require approval for consequential actions.
- Follow your organisation's approved-use policy.
- Never treat fluent output as authorization to act.
Core workflows
Step-by-step ways to use Mastra for the work it does best.
Each workflow is a separate guide with its own steps and review checkpoints.
Give one agent a narrow goal and typed tools while keeping identity, authorization, validation, and side effects outside model control.
↗ 02 WorkflowRun a resumable Mastra approval workflowUse explicit steps, durable snapshots, idempotent effects, authenticated resume payloads, and observability for long-running work.
↗Official references
Check the current product documentation.
Features, plan limits, availability, and data controls change. These official pages are the starting points used for this guide.