While

The while step runs its nested steps repeatedly as long as a Kibana Query Language (KQL) condition evaluates to true. The condition is re-evaluated at the end of every iteration.

Use while for polling patterns: checking a status until it reaches ready, retrying an operation until it succeeds, or waiting for an external job to complete. For iterating over a known collection, use foreach instead.

Schema convention. In each schema table on this page, the Location column indicates where each parameter sits in the YAML:

• top level: Alongside type and name, at the top of the step or trigger definition.
• `with`: Inside the step's with: block.
• `on`: Inside the trigger's on: block.

Use loop-level guardrails to control the while step as a whole:

• max-iterations caps the number of iterations to prevent runaway loops.
• timeout limits the total time spent in the loop, across all iterations.
• on-failure defines loop-level failure handling with the same continue, retry, and fallback options used by other steps.
• if skips the entire loop when the condition evaluates to false.

Use iteration-level guardrails to control each pass through the loop:

• iteration-timeout limits how long one iteration can run.
• iteration-on-failure handles failures for one iteration with continue, retry, or fallback without failing the whole loop.

# Bare number: default `on-limit` is `continue` (the step succeeds when the limit is reached)
max-iterations: 60

# Object form: opt into `on-limit: fail` to fail the workflow when the limit is reached
max-iterations:
  limit: 60
  on-limit: fail

Inside the steps block of a while, the following variables are available:

- name: poll_job
  type: while
  if: "inputs.poll : true"
  condition: "steps.check.output.status : pending"
  max-iterations:
    limit: 60
    on-limit: fail
  timeout: "10m"
  iteration-timeout: "30s"
  iteration-on-failure:
    retry:
      max-attempts: 2
      delay: "1s"
  steps:
    - name: check
      type: elasticsearch.search
      with:
        index: "jobs"
        query:
          term:
            id: "{{ inputs.job_id }}"
        size: 1

    - name: log_progress
      type: console
      with:
        message: "Attempt {{ while.iteration }}: status {{ steps.check.output.hits.hits[0]._source.status }}"

    - name: wait
      type: wait
      with:
        duration: "5s"

If the job hasn't left pending after 60 iterations (five minutes), the loop exits with failure.

• Flow control steps: Overview of all flow-control types.
• Foreach step: For iterating over a known array.
• Loop break and Loop continue: Control loop flow from inside the body.