CrewAI Getting Started & Architecture

How to choose the right abstraction, scaffold a project, and wire everything together.

MANDATORY WORKFLOW — Read This First

NEVER manually create crewAI project files. Always scaffold with the CLI:

crewai create flow <project_name>

This is not optional. Even if you only need one crew, even if you know the file structure by heart — run the CLI first, then modify the generated files. Do NOT write main.py, crew.py, agents.yaml, tasks.yaml, or pyproject.toml by hand from scratch.

Why: The CLI sets up correct imports, directory structure, pyproject.toml config, and boilerplate that is easy to get subtly wrong when done manually. The reference material below teaches you how the pieces work so you can modify scaffolded code, not so you can replace the scaffolding step.