# Your first pipeline

> A pipeline lives at `.hive/main.star` in your repository. Starlark, not YAML.

Source: https://hiveci.io/docs/first-pipeline
Language: en

A pipeline lives at `.hive/main.star` in your repository. Starlark, not YAML.
## Start small
Adopting Hive does not mean moving your whole build. Start with one cheap, uncontroversial step — a linter, a fast unit-test shard — leave your existing GitHub Actions workflows exactly where they are, and let the two run side by side. Nothing about Hive requires you to switch off what you already have, and running both for a while is the only way to compare them on your own repository.
Widen it once you trust it. A pipeline that does one thing well on every commit is worth more than a complete one that nobody has confidence in yet.
## Watching a run
```
list_runs                       # recent runs
get_run <run>                   # the task DAG, states, placement
wait_for_run <run>              # block until it finishes
explain_failure <run>           # failing tasks: error + log tail, in one call
get_task_logs <run> <task_key>  # one task's log
```
Run ids accept the `#N` number shown in the UI as well as the UUID. If a number is ambiguous across pipelines, narrow it with the project and pipeline.
`explain_failure` is the one to reach for first on a red run — it collapses "which task failed, why, and what did it print" into a single call.
## What makes a run start
A push or pull-request webhook from a repository whose installation is bound to your tenant. If runs are not appearing, the problem is almost always the installation or the `repo_url`, not the pipeline file — see `03-github-app-and-projects`.
A pipeline file that fails to evaluate is a different symptom: the run is created and fails immediately, rather than never appearing.