Thanks to @Jonathan Manning, it took me 2 days but manage to get something really cool with nf-metro 🎉 https://github.com/nf-core/variantbenchmarking/blob/2d6cff0b0ccbdae28e8c0aca489c30751e47fbec/docs/images/variantbenchmarking.svg

IMG_7389.jpg,IMG_7390.jpg

This looks good @Dominik Maszczyk !

I wonder if it could tie into the work by @Jonathan Manning above, which also uses mermaid diagrams

Wonder if it is possible in nf-metro to make metro lines fuse back together? I have a complex branching structure where all the intermediate steps are skippable and am trying to draw something that represents that...

Another metro map tool! https://nextflow.slack.com/archives/C03L6DMAN/p1774646045814229 by @Dominik Maszczyk https://github.com/Skitionek/nf-mapper

Hello everyone! After my talk at the 2025 Nextflow Summit (you can watch it here: ), I wanted to share the tool that I presented with the community: MetroFlow. What is MetroFlow? MetroFlow is an open source tool that automatically builds an interactive “metro‑map” visualization of Nextflow workflows. The goal is to give developers and users a quick and easy, graphical way to explore and understand workflow structure based on the popular nf-core metro-map style representations, reducing the effort required to write and maintain separate documentation. How does it work? 1. Nextflow Language Server runs on the workflow code to extract the workflow structure. 2. If the language server can’t parse the workflow code, we fall back to the Bioflow‑insight tool (https://doi.org/10.1093/nargab/lqae092) to recover the structure. 3. MetroFlow then represents the workflow structure into an interactive metro‑map that you can explore, edit, and share. Key functionalities • Explore the code ◦ Visualize each process’s code directly from the metro-map representations. ◦ See the conditions which need to be verified for a given path to be taken. • Simplify the graph ◦ Collapse subworkflows into single nodes, reducing the perceived complexity in the workflow. ◦ View subworkflows in isolation. • Edit the layout ◦ Drag nodes to new positions. ◦ Hide or minimize nodes you don’t need. ◦ Highlight specific execution paths. ◦ Export/share a customized layout. These features let you visualize, share, understand, and reuse Nextflow workflows with far less manual documentation, we hope to make the workflow logic clearer for developers, end‑users, and reviewers alike. You can try MetroFlow out here: https://metroflow.pasteur.cloud/ Link to source code: https://gitlab.pasteur.fr/sharefair/metroflow Thanks so much for your feedback. George Marchment

I'm so behind, nearly every slide deck so far at the summit has had a metro map 😅

IMG_8105.jpg

Finally got round to a new release: https://github.com/pinin4fjords/nf-metro/releases/tag/0.7.0 Loads of bugfixes, plus lots of work to try and make the layout engine more robust

Random find for today, NASA's article on amplicon sequencing has a neat metro map made with our assets

Hello all, We are currently recruiting participants for a user study investigating how users understand Nextflow workflows, and whether a tool such as MetroFlow can support this process. The study is conducted online and consists of a video-meeting combined with an online questionnaire. It takes approximately 60 minutes. During the session, you will be asked to • analyze two workflows (one using MetroFlow and one without it), • answer a few questions about these workflows, • participate in a short interview at the end. To participate, you should • be at least 18 years old, • have some familiarity with Nextflow workflows Thank you very much for considering participation in our study. If you are interested in participating you can schedule your session here: https://calendar.app.google/NRNhLFuSvTgAD7XR9 And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at: lenora.buggenhoudt@universite-paris-saclay.fr Thank you so much for your help, Best regards, The user study team

I may have gotten carried away... https://pinin4fjords.github.io/nf-metro/dev/live/

I made another thing: https://pinin4fjords.github.io/nf-metro/dev/playground/ nf-metro playground editor. Still possible to make quite a mess, but I've made it so you can start from one of the many in-built examples easily. Please smash the 'report a bug' button at the top right when renders do crazy stuff, it will basically make github issues for you, with the dodgy mmds in-built.

🚇 nf-metro 1.0.0 is out, in its new home under the Seqera org! It's a whopper: github.com/seqeralabs/…/1.0.0 ✨ First thing you'll notice is a swanky new Astro website built by @Phil Ewels (and tinkered with further by me): seqeralabs.github.io/nf-metro What's new: • 🛠️ Lots of work to make the engine more robust • 🎮 An initial 'playground' for building maps interactively • 📊 The ability to layer live workflow progress over a metro map ⚠️ Layout is still harder than you might think, so if your specific mermaid produces mistakes, let me know via an issue: github.com/seqeralabs/nf-metro/issues. The playground also has a button to submit errors with the mermaid code inline.

looks familiar, but we have the nice angles imo https://mermaid.ai/open-source/syntax/railroad.html

I am trying to create a metro map for #C06R4FC4C1E using nf-metro (since it feels easier than maintaining the manual SVG) and I have run into an issue. I get a CurveInvariantError with a specific station and line layout. The layout is hard to describe, but I will attach an example in the thread. Uncommenting both connections at the very end at once is what breaks it. I believe this is a bug in the renderer rather than my own error, but I don't know the system well enough to tell

I am playing with nf-metro, and I am trying to figure out how to use the grid. Is there a way to allow a section to take more space than one cell? E.g. I have a section that is kind of "long" in an LR graph, and it would be useful to have that occupy two rows and everything else to the right be spread across those two.

Hi All, how does nf-metro control or determine when to go top-down and right-left as in the rna-seq example? In the nf-metro guide, it mentions a 'TB' section in the

rnaseq_auto.mmd

, but it isn't defined anywhere in the .mmd file. Looking at the

rnaseq_auto.mmd

I don't see anything special defined anywhere, but running it also just works... 😅 For context, in my own .mmd file, my final output is a little long (need to scroll) so I want to force at least my final subgraph to snake back if possible. Thanks!

No clue what the context 🤣

nf-metro 2.1.0 is out: seqeralabs.github.io/nf-metro/latest/releases/2.1.0 A few little engine fixes as usual, but you folks will be most interested in @Phil Ewels’s additions for native png and vid/gif output. So no need for Cairo any more, and you can make a gif of the 'moving balls' animation the SVG shows, for example (and I have thoughts on other purposes we can put that in-built animation recording to in future).

london-tube-map-digestive-system@2x.jpg

@Phil Ewels I've found another weekend project for you https://unsung.aresluna.org/before-pixels-modular-industrial-dashboards/

Has anyone tried Mods in claude code? I've been experimenting with interactive metro maps in the terminal

Screenshot 2026-10-13 at 14.40.44.png

Hi, a quick question. Is there a way to increase the font size of the section numbers? Thanks!

For the not yet -- but hopefully soon -- released #C0BVDK00QKY. I know about the background, the light and dark, but haven't done that yet.