When seeing the puzzle initially, I thought min cycles would be trivially similar to stab water. I was wrong.

Since the last output needed to happen in 5 cycles, thought of doing 3 pipelines pretty early.

The idea to have 2 pipelines that only use a single input came later though. That allowed for the pipelines to not be as tied together, feeling less cramped. 

Though this decreases the chances for glyph reuse, so I wouldn't be surprised if this gets beaten by either fewer pipelines or pipelines that converge on a path.