Disabled flag

The disabled flag is a boolean property that lets you skip a flow, task, or trigger.

This is useful for debugging or testing parts of a flow without removing existing logic. Instead of deleting parts of your YAML, you can add the disabled property.

Disabled flow

When a flow is disabled, it will not be executed — even if a trigger is set. If you have an active trigger on a disabled flow, it will be ignored. You don’t need to disable the trigger separately – it is ignored automatically. Setting a flow to disabled effectively prevents any future executions of the flow until it is re-enabled.

Add the following flow, then attempt to run it and observe the scheduled executions:

id: disabled_flow
namespace: company.team
disabled: true

tasks:
  - id: hello
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
    message: Kestra team wishes you a great day! 👋

triggers:
  - id: fail_every_minute
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.trigger.Schedule
    cron: "*/1 * * * *"

You will see that you cannot run the flow and that the trigger is ignored — no executions are created.

disabled_flag

When executing a disabled flow from a subflow:

id: parent_runs_disabled_flow
namespace: company.team
tasks:
  - id: disabled_subflow
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Subflow
    flowId: disabled_flow
    namespace: company.team

When you execute the parent flow, it immediately fails with the error message: Cannot execute a flow which is disabled.

disabled_flag_2

Similarly, try running a disabled flow via an API call:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/main/executions/trigger/example/parent_runs_disabled_flow

The API call itself is successful:

{"id":"5ScXvrnOkjfKIXqYylRYME","namespace":"example","flowId":"parent_runs_disabled_flow","flowRevision":1,"state":{"current":"CREATED","histories":[{"state":"CREATED","date":"2024-01-19T20:38:48.474047013Z"}],"duration":"PT0.011094958S","startDate":"2024-01-19T20:38:48.474047013Z"},"originalId":"5ScXvrnOkjfKIXqYylRYME"}%

That execution is immediately marked as failed with the error message: Cannot execute a flow which is disabled.

Disabled trigger

When using a Schedule trigger, it is often useful to disable it temporarily. For example, you may want to disable a trigger while you are debugging a flow. You can do this by setting the disabled flag to true on the trigger:

id: myflow
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: hello
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
    message: hello from a scheduled flow

triggers:
  - id: daily
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.trigger.Schedule
    cron: "0 9 * * *"
    disabled: true

You will see that no scheduled executions are created for this flow. Once you are done debugging, you can re-enable the trigger by setting the disabled flag to false or simply by removing the disabled flag:

id: myflow
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: hello
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
    message: hello from a scheduled flow

triggers:
  - id: daily
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.trigger.Schedule
    cron: "0 9 * * *"

Disabled task

Instead of disabling the entire flow or a trigger, you can also disable a single task. This is useful when you want to temporarily disable a single task without deleting it e.g., when troubleshooting a failure. You can do this by setting the disabled flag to true on the task:

id: myflow
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: enabled
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
    message: this task will run

  - id: disabled
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.debug.Return
    format: this task will be skipped
    disabled: true

You can see in the UI that disabled tasks are greyed out:

disabled_flag_3