> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://zenml.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Extending Stacks

> How to leverage stacks

The goal of this section is to showcase some critical advanced use-cases for ZenML stacks.

### List of topics

* [Writing Custom Stack Component Flavors](/advanced-guide/stacks/custom-flavors) can be useful when trying to use ZenML with tooling or infrastructure for which no official integration exists yet.
* [Managing Stack Component States](/advanced-guide/stacks/stack-state-management) is required for certain integrations with remote components and can also be used to configure custom setup behavior of custom stack component flavors.
* [Managing External Services](/advanced-guide/stacks/manage-external-services) might be required for deploying custom models or for the UI's of some visualization tools like TensorBoard. These services are usually long-lived external processes that persist beyond the execution of your pipeline runs.

<Info>
  We will keep adding more use-cases to the advanced guide of ZenML stacks. If
  there is a particular topic you can not find here or any use-case that you
  would like learn more about, you can reach us in our [Slack
  Channel](https://zenml.io/slack-invite).
</Info>