---
title: Introduction
description: DeerFlow is a runtime harness for building long-horizon agent systems with skills, memory, tools, and sandboxed execution.
---


# Introduction

Welcome to DeerFlow!

DeerFlow is a framework for building and operating agent systems. Rather than treating an AI agent as a simple text generator or a hardcoded workflow graph, DeerFlow provides a robust **runtime harness** that packages the core components required for agents to perform meaningful, long-horizon work.

## What is DeerFlow?

DeerFlow bridges the gap between raw LLMs and production-ready agent workflows. It focuses on the capabilities necessary to complete complex tasks:

- **Long-Horizon Planning**: Keeping agents on-track and coherent across multiple reasoning cycles and tool invocations.
- **Decomposition via Subagents**: Breaking complex work into parallel, isolated tasks that don't overwhelm the main agent's context window.
- **Sandboxed Execution**: Giving agents a safe, isolated filesystem environment where they can write files, run tests, and execute code.
- **Modular Skills & Tools**: Loading capabilities dynamically so the agent's core stays general while adapting to specific workloads (e.g. deep research or data analysis).
- **Persistent Memory & Context Engineering**: Managing what the agent remembers, summarizes, or forgets across turns and sessions.

## Section Contents

To help you build the right mental model before diving into implementation:

<Cards num={3}>
  <Cards.Card title="Why DeerFlow" href="/docs/introduction/why-deerflow" />
  <Cards.Card title="Core Concepts" href="/docs/introduction/core-concepts" />
  <Cards.Card title="Harness vs App" href="/docs/introduction/harness-vs-app" />
</Cards>
