What problem does it solve?
It solves the challenge of orchestrating multi-step operations that must keep running reliably across restarts, pauses for external events, retries on failure, and long-running coordination.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Durable execution with retries: Use Vercel’s Workflow DevKit so multi-step work survives interruptions and can resume deterministically.
- Step vs workflow separation: Keep business logic in
"use step" for full Node.js access while using "use workflow" for orchestration.
- AI agents inside workflows: Use
DurableAgent to stream AI results while maintaining state across pauses.
- External event coordination (hooks/webhooks): Pause workflows with
createHook() and resume them via resumeHook() when events arrive, or integrate with webhooks.
- Error handling and observability: Use
FatalError and RetryableError to control retry behavior and use Workflow CLI tooling to inspect runs.
Quick Start
Ask your AI assistant to “Create a durable workflow that orchestrates step-based logic, waits for an approval event using hooks, then resumes to finalize results with retryable error handling.”