Overview
Widely adopted nf-core pipelines play a critical role in the ecosystem. They are widely used by the community and often act as reference for the development of the rest of the pipelines.
This page defines a tier for such pipelines, called Very Important Pipelines, with elevated expectations around maintenance, governance, testing, and documentation. The intent is to formalise best practices that many popular pipelines already follow and to provide a clear model for long-term, sustainable pipeline development.
Scope
Very Important Pipelines are standard nf-core pipelines that have reached high community adoption and visibility. All existing nf-core requirements continue to apply. This tier adds additional recommendations appropriate for pipelines with a large user and contributor base.
This tier is additive, not exclusive.
Selection
There are no strict thresholds. Selection is based on an overall assessment by the nf-core core team, considering factors such as:
- Number of pull requests and contributors
- Repository stars and forks
- Pipeline age and stability
- Issue volume and responsiveness
- Website traffic and usage indicators
Selection is expected to evolve organically as pipelines grow and mature.
Recommendations
Team and governance
Very Important Pipelines should demonstrate shared ownership and active governance.
Recommended practices:
- A team of active co-developers
- A dedicated GitHub team
- Defined code owners using CODEOWNERS
- Regular development meetings, open to the community
- Use of milestones to plan and track releases
- A developer focused Slack channel, separate from user support
Development and maintenance
Very Important Pipelines should maintain a high standard of technical quality and currency.
Recommended practices:
- Regular review of default configuration usage
- Pipeline template and tool versions kept within two releases of current
- Automated testing coverage above eighty percent
- Clear issue advisories when known problems are identified
- Participation in an nf-core bytesize talk
Documentation and user experience
Very Important Pipelines should set the standard for clarity and usability.
Recommended practices:
- A pipeline logo and associated visual assets
- A pipeline metro map
- Extended documentation beyond the minimum requirements
- All outputs fully described in the documentation
- Practical usage tutorials for common workflows