Abstract: This disclosure describes techniques relating to development of data flow pipelines. In one example, this disclosure describes a method that includes accessing, by a computing system, metadata identifying characteristics of a data flow pipeline; generating, by the computing system and based on the metadata, the data flow pipeline, wherein the data flow pipeline includes a plurality of stages, and wherein the plurality of stages includes a multi-sourced stage in which data output by each of a subset of stages in the plurality of stages are used as input to the multi-sourced stage; executing, by the computing system, the data flow pipeline; detecting, by the computing system, modifications to the metadata; generating, based on the modifications, an updated data flow pipeline; and executing, by the computing system, the updated data flow pipeline.