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Workflows and administrative schedules

Import pkg/backplane/workflows only in code that intentionally uses Temporal. The core service and generated console clients do not need Temporal types.

workflows.Declare(component, "GreetMany", component.GreetMany,
    workflows.Describe("greets every name"))
workflows.Declare(component, "Report", component.Report,
    workflows.Describe("reports greetings so far"))

These typed workflow functions accept workflow.Context. Declaring one exposes its contract for administrative runs and schedules. Register its implementation dependencies with workflows.Register and the supplied Temporal worker registry. Use workflows.Activity when exposing a workflow-backed operation as an activity to bindings.

Activities of your own workflows​

An activity only your workflows run (a saga's step) is registered with workflows.HandleActivity, not activity.Handle: it stays out of the manifest, so no binding or rule can call it, and keeps everything else of activity.Handle — payload encoding, activity.InfoOf (idempotency key, attempt, deadline), activity.Heartbeat, activity.NonRetryable, activity.RetryAfter, tracing, metrics and panic recovery.

charge := workflows.HandleActivity(component, "ChargeCard", component.Charge)

// in workflow code
ctx = workflow.WithActivityOptions(ctx, workflow.ActivityOptions{StartToCloseTimeout: time.Minute})
receipt, err := charge.Execute(ctx, card)

Timeouts and the retry policy are the workflow's (workflow.ActivityOptions). The name shares the service queue's activity names with activity.Handle; one taken twice panics at declaration. workflowtest.New registers these activities too.

Determinism​

Workflow code must use Temporal workflow APIs for time, concurrency and activity execution. Do not read changing process configuration, access a database or publish an event directly during workflow replay. Perform those operations in activities and return their results into the workflow history.

The hello Welcome workflow calls the Greet hook with workflows.CallHook. On success it executes a recording activity; when the hook is unbound it executes the local composition activity. This keeps greeting events and audit on the activity side of the deterministic boundary.

Schedule ownership​

The SDK creates no schedules. Operators use ScheduleService or the service Workflows page to create, update, delete, pause, resume and trigger schedules. A service rollout must not recreate an operator-deleted schedule or clear its pause.

Declare stable workflow names and keep scheduled payloads compatible across rolling versions. Before removing a workflow, inspect schedules and in-flight executions that still reference it. Revision checks protect concurrent administrative updates; read the latest definition after a conflict rather than overwriting it blindly.

Run identity and retries​

Use workflow IDs deliberately. A transport timeout after a start command does not prove the workflow failed to start. Read the run and operation audit before issuing another start. Activity retries can repeat external side effects, so the activity must honor a business idempotency key where needed.

See workflow operations, WorkflowService and ScheduleService for the current API.