LoomKit.Workflows 10.0.1

LoomKit.Workflows

A workflow orchestration library for .NET built around the same job-queue model as LoomKit.Jobs: workflows are sequences of activities, placed on named queues, picked up by consumers, and processed through an extensible middleware pipeline. Unlike a plain job, an activity's handler decides what happens next — continue, pause and wait for an external signal, fork into parallel branches (optionally re-joining them), or end — so a whole multi-step process is orchestrated as a chain of independently-scheduled, independently-retryable steps instead of one long-running call. This is the multi-step-orchestration sibling of LoomKit.Requests, LoomKit.Notifications, and LoomKit.Jobs: same dependency-injection and middleware shape, adapted to a process with branching and state instead of a single request/response or a single deferred unit of work.

Status: early stage. The public API may still change between versions — pin a commit/tag if you depend on it.

Features

• Named queues and consumers, wired together and started/stopped as a single IHostedService
• Handlers resolved from your DI container (Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection)
• An optional middleware pipeline per consumer, configured at startup — built-in retry middleware included
• Branching workflows: WorkflowFork spawns independent parallel branches sharing the same WorkflowId
• Fork re-join: a fork can optionally also enqueue a join-point activity that waits for its branches (WorkflowJoin) to report in, deciding for itself when it has enough — including a branch's permanent failure, delivered as a first-class arrival so the join point never has to infer a branch's disappearance by polling
• Resume-token-based pausing: WorkflowPause suspends an activity until an external caller triggers a matching token (e.g. from a webhook or an email link)
• Bounded delayed continuation (NextAt on WorkflowContinue/WorkflowPause) for polling-with-timeout patterns
• Optional WorkflowName label (non-unique, unlike WorkflowId) for dedup/observability queries across concurrent instances of "the same kind" of workflow
• Built-in tracing via System.Diagnostics.ActivitySource (OpenTelemetry-compatible), including full trace-context propagation across the async/queue boundary
• Lifecycle events (ActivityScheduled/ActivityStarted/ActivityEnded/ActivityException) on the manager
• CancellationToken propagated end-to-end, from the consumer through every middleware down to the handler
• Extensible: bring your own IActivityQueue, IActivityConsumer, or IWorkflowManager implementation if the defaults don't fit

Requirements

• .NET 10 or later
• Runtime dependencies: Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection.Abstractions, Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.Abstractions, Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions

Installation

Via NuGet (recommended)

dotnet add package LoomKit.Workflows

Available on nuget.org once the first tagged release (v1.0.0) has been published — a package version is published automatically for every vX.Y.Z tag pushed to this repo.

If you'd rather build against the source directly instead (e.g. to track main, or to debug/modify the library alongside your app), two options:

As a git submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/andreafoorlan/LoomKit.Workflows.git external/LoomKit.Workflows
cd external/LoomKit.Workflows
git checkout v1.0.0
cd ../..
git add external/LoomKit.Workflows
git commit -m "Add LoomKit.Workflows submodule pinned to v1.0.0"

Then reference the project from your solution/project:

<ProjectReference Include="..\external\LoomKit.Workflows\src\LoomKit.Workflows.csproj" />

When cloning a repository that already has this submodule:

git clone --recurse-submodules <your-repo-url>
# or, on an existing clone:
git submodule update --init --recursive

To move to a newer release later:

cd external/LoomKit.Workflows
git fetch --tags
git checkout v1.1.0
cd ../..
git add external/LoomKit.Workflows
git commit -m "Bump LoomKit.Workflows submodule to v1.1.0"

(git submodule add -b <tag> doesn't pin reliably since submodules track branches, not tags — checkout inside the submodule plus committing the resulting gitlink in the parent repo is what actually pins the commit.)

Plain project reference

If you're vendoring the source directly instead of using a submodule:

<ProjectReference Include="..\path\to\LoomKit.Workflows\src\LoomKit.Workflows.csproj" />

Core concepts

IWorkflowStep — what happens next

An IActivityHandler returns one of these:

Quick start

1. Define the workflow context

public sealed record OrderContext : WorkflowContext
{
    public required string OrderId { get; init; }
    public string? PaymentId { get; init; }
}

(WorkflowContext pre-fills WorkflowId/CreatedAt/UpdatedAt — implement IWorkflowContext directly instead if you need full control over those.)

2. Define activities and handlers

public sealed record ProcessPaymentActivity(decimal Amount) : Activity<OrderContext>;
public sealed record SendConfirmationActivity(string Email) : Activity<OrderContext>;

public sealed class ProcessPaymentHandler : IActivityHandler<ProcessPaymentActivity, OrderContext>
{
    private readonly IPaymentService _payments;

    public ProcessPaymentHandler(IPaymentService payments) => _payments = payments;

    public async Task<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>> HandleAsync(
        ProcessPaymentActivity activity, OrderContext context, ActivitySchedule schedule, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        var paymentId = await _payments.ChargeAsync(context.OrderId, activity.Amount, cancellationToken);

        return new WorkflowContinue<SendConfirmationActivity, OrderContext>
        {
            Next = new SendConfirmationActivity("customer@example.com"),
            Context = context with { PaymentId = paymentId, UpdatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow }
        };
    }
}

3. Register handlers, queues, and consumers in DI

Handlers are plain DI services. Register them one by one:

services.AddScoped<IActivityHandler<ProcessPaymentActivity, OrderContext>, ProcessPaymentHandler>();
services.AddScoped<IActivityHandler<SendConfirmationActivity, OrderContext>, SendConfirmationHandler>();

...or scan one or more assemblies for every closed IActivityHandler<,> implementation and register them all at once — no extra package required, this is built in:

services.AddActivityHandlersFromAssemblies(ServiceLifetime.Scoped, typeof(Program).Assembly);

Calling it more than once, or passing overlapping assemblies, won't produce duplicate registrations. It only picks up closed, concrete handler classes — an open-generic handler isn't discovered and must still be registered by hand.

Then wire up the manager itself:

services.AddDefaultWorkflowManager(builder => builder
    .UseQueue<InProcessActivityQueue>("orders", q =>
    {
        q.MaxActivityRetries = 3;
        q.ActivityAwaitCheckInterval = 500;   // ms between queue polls
        q.ActivityRetryInterval = 5000;
    })
    .UseConsumer<ActivityConsumer>("orders-consumer", "orders", c =>
    {
        c.UseScopedServiceProvider = true;                 // one DI scope per activity
        c.UseActivityMiddleware(typeof(ActivityRetryMiddleware<,>));
    })
    .UseWorkflowManagerSeeder<OrderWorkflowSeeder>());

AddDefaultWorkflowManager registers IWorkflowManager as a singleton and as an IHostedService (not configurable — the host only manages hosted services as singletons), backed by the default DefaultWorkflowManager, InProcessActivityQueue, and ActivityConsumer.

4. Start a workflow

public sealed class OrderService(IWorkflowManager workflowManager)
{
    public Task PlaceOrderAsync(string orderId, decimal amount, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
        => workflowManager.StartWorkflowAsync(
            queueName: "orders",
            firstActivity: new ProcessPaymentActivity(amount),
            context: new OrderContext { OrderId = orderId },
            workflowName: "order-processing",
            cancellationToken: cancellationToken);
}

5. Pause and resume with a resume token

A pause point isn't limited to one token — supply as many as the activity has possible outcomes, each with its own Action label:

// in a handler, to pause and wait for an external signal - here, two possible outcomes:
var approveToken = new ResumeToken { Action = "approve" };
var cancelToken = new ResumeToken { Action = "cancel" };
// each token's Value (a GUID) gets communicated externally, e.g. in two different email links
return new WorkflowPause<WaitForApprovalActivity, OrderContext>
{
    Next = new WaitForApprovalActivity(),
    ResumeTokens = [approveToken, cancelToken],
    Context = context
};

// later, from a webhook/API endpoint - the manager searches every queue automatically for whichever
// token value matches, regardless of which of the two it turns out to be:
await workflowManager.TriggerResumeTokenAsync(tokenValue: resumeTokenValue);

The resumed activity reads which token actually fired from TriggeredResumeToken.Action to decide what happens next:

public sealed class WaitForApprovalHandler : IActivityHandler<WaitForApprovalActivity, OrderContext>
{
    public Task<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>> HandleAsync(
        WaitForApprovalActivity activity, OrderContext context, ActivitySchedule schedule, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext> result = schedule.TriggeredResumeToken?.Action switch
        {
            "approve" => new WorkflowContinue<ShipOrderActivity, OrderContext> { Next = new ShipOrderActivity(), Context = context },
            "cancel" => new WorkflowFail<OrderContext> { Context = context, Exception = new InvalidOperationException("Order cancelled by approver.") },
            _ => new WorkflowEnd<OrderContext> { Context = context }
        };

        return Task.FromResult(result);
    }
}

Fork & re-join

WorkflowFork<TCtx> spawns independent branches sharing the same WorkflowId. With JoinPointActivity left null, it behaves exactly like a plain fork always has: every branch runs to its own WorkflowEnd, nobody waits for anybody.

Setting JoinPointActivity also enqueues it, paused, as the fork's join point. Branches then return WorkflowJoin instead of WorkflowEnd to contribute to it:

public sealed record CollectShipmentResultsActivity : Activity<OrderContext>
{
    public required IReadOnlyList<string> ExpectedJoinIds { get; init; }
    public IReadOnlyDictionary<string, bool> Received { get; init; } = new Dictionary<string, bool>();
}

public sealed class ForkOrderHandler : IActivityHandler<ForkOrderActivity, OrderContext>
{
    public Task<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>> HandleAsync(
        ForkOrderActivity activity, OrderContext context, ActivitySchedule schedule, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        var joinIds = new[] { "payment", "inventory" }; // assigned by the fork, not the branches

        var fork = new WorkflowFork<OrderContext>
        {
            Branches =
            [
                ForkBranch<OrderContext>.Of(new ChargePaymentActivity(), joinId: "payment"),
                ForkBranch<OrderContext>.Of(new ReserveInventoryActivity(), joinId: "inventory")
            ],
            JoinPointActivity = new CollectShipmentResultsActivity { ExpectedJoinIds = joinIds },
            Context = context
        };

        return Task.FromResult<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>>(fork);
    }
}

// a branch, once done, joins instead of ending:
public sealed class ChargePaymentHandler : IActivityHandler<ChargePaymentActivity, OrderContext>
{
    public async Task<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>> HandleAsync(
        ChargePaymentActivity activity, OrderContext context, ActivitySchedule schedule, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        await ChargeAsync(context.OrderId, cancellationToken);
        return new WorkflowJoin<OrderContext> { Context = context };
    }
}

// the join point: dispatched again every time new arrivals land, decides for itself whether to
// keep waiting or proceed - the library has no built-in notion of "required" vs "optional" arrivals,
// that decision is entirely yours
public sealed class CollectShipmentResultsHandler : IActivityHandler<CollectShipmentResultsActivity, OrderContext>
{
    public Task<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>> HandleAsync(
        CollectShipmentResultsActivity activity, OrderContext context, ActivitySchedule schedule, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        var received = new Dictionary<string, bool>(activity.Received);
        foreach (var arrival in schedule.TriggeredJoinArrivals ?? [])
            received[arrival.JoinId] = !arrival.Failed; // failures land here too, see below

        if (received.Count < activity.ExpectedJoinIds.Count)
        {
            return Task.FromResult<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>>(
                new WorkflowJoinWait<CollectShipmentResultsActivity, OrderContext>
                {
                    Next = activity with { Received = received },
                    Context = context
                });
        }

        return Task.FromResult<IWorkflowStep<IActivity<OrderContext>, OrderContext>>(
            new WorkflowEnd<OrderContext> { Context = context });
    }
}

Permanent branch failures are delivered too, through the same channel as a deliberate WorkflowFail (see below): if a branch exhausts its retries and the exception propagates, the consumer notifies the join point exactly as it would for WorkflowFail (JoinArrival.Failed = true, Exception set) — so a join-point handler never has to infer a branch's disappearance by polling for absence; it can just check arrival.Failed on whatever it receives.

Known limitation, not yet addressed: a WorkflowJoin/failure arrival for a ForkId whose join point has already decided to proceed (and moved on) has nowhere left to be delivered — it's silently dropped (with a warning log) rather than causing an error. There's no cleanup/closure signal yet for "this fork's join is done, stop delivering to it."

⚠️ Nested forks are not fully supported yet. A branch can itself return another WorkflowFork — that inner fork (and its own join point, if any) runs and resolves independently. But it does not compose back into the outer fork's join point: the moment a branch forks again, its own ForkId/JoinId membership in the outer fork is abandoned, so that slot in the outer join point's arrivals will never be filled. There's currently no supported way for an inner fork+join to feed a result back to an ancestor's join point.

Explicit failure (WorkflowFail)

WorkflowFail<TCtx> is a deliberate, final failure outcome, carrying an optional Exception — distinct from letting an exception propagate:

return new WorkflowFail<OrderContext>
{
    Context = context,
    Exception = new PaymentDeclinedException(context.OrderId)
};

It bypasses ActivityRetryMiddleware entirely. Middleware only intercepts exceptions thrown by the next handler in the chain — it never inspects a handler's return value — so a WorkflowFail returned normally is never retried, regardless of RetriesLeft. Use it for a final business decision that retrying wouldn't change; throw instead for a transient error you do want retried. Retries exhausted after a genuine exception still take the exception path (ActivityException event, logged as an error) rather than becoming a WorkflowFail — the two stay deliberately separate, since one signals a bug/operational fault and the other a successful execution that concluded negatively.

On a fork branch (ForkId/JoinId set), WorkflowFail is delivered to the join point the same way a permanently-failed branch is (see above) — a join-point handler doesn't need to know or care whether a Failed = true arrival came from an exhausted retry or an explicit decision.

The OTel span for a WorkflowFail is tagged activity.outcome = "fail" and (if Exception is set) records it as a span event — but its status is not set to Error, unlike a genuinely unhandled exception, so a business failure doesn't trigger the same alerting a bug would.

Delayed continuation

WorkflowContinue/WorkflowPause accept an optional NextAt. Left null (the default), the next activity is enqueued immediately, same as always. Set it to implement bounded polling/timeout patterns:

return new WorkflowContinue<CheckPaymentStatusActivity, OrderContext>
{
    Next = new CheckPaymentStatusActivity(attempt: attempt + 1),
    NextAt = DateTime.UtcNow.AddSeconds(30), // recheck in 30s
    Context = context
};

WorkflowName

StartWorkflowAsync/StartWorkflowAtAsync accept an optional workflowName, carried forward on every ActivitySchedule for that workflow instance (continue/pause/fork/retry — the same treatment as WorkflowId). Unlike WorkflowId, it's not unique by design: several concurrent instances of "the same kind" of workflow (e.g. every run of a nightly report) can share the same name, which is exactly what makes it useful for dedup/observability queries:

var alreadyRunning = (await workflowManager.ListQueuedActivitySchedulesAsync(q => q))
    .SelectMany(kv => kv.Value)
    .Any(s => s.WorkflowName == "nightly-report");

It's also emitted as the workflow.name tracing tag alongside workflow.id (see Observability) — useful since a raw WorkflowId GUID isn't legible on its own in a trace view.

Extensibility: custom queues, consumers, and managers

Implement IActivityQueue and pass the type to UseQueue<T>. The constructor receives the queue's ActivityQueueOptions and any other services registered in DI, injected automatically via ActivatorUtilities:

public sealed class RedisActivityQueue : IActivityQueue
{
    public RedisActivityQueue(IWorkflowManager manager, ActivityQueueOptions options, IConnectionMultiplexer redis) { /* ... */ }
    // implement the rest of IActivityQueue
}

services.AddDefaultWorkflowManager(builder => builder.UseQueue<RedisActivityQueue>("orders", _ => { }));

IActivityConsumer works the same way via UseConsumer<T>.

If you need different behavior at the manager level itself, derive from WorkflowManager<TOptions> and register it with the generic overload — like IJobScheduler in LoomKit.Jobs, there's no WithLifetime: an IWorkflowManager is always registered as a singleton IHostedService, since that's the only lifetime the host manages hosted services with.

services.AddWorkflowManager<MyWorkflowManager, MyWorkflowManagerOptionsBuilder, MyWorkflowManagerOptions>(options => { });

Lifecycle events

workflowManager.ActivityScheduled += (_, e) => Console.WriteLine($"Scheduled {e.ActivitySchedule.Activity.ActivityId}");
workflowManager.ActivityStarted   += (_, e) => Console.WriteLine($"Started   on {e.ConsumerName}");
workflowManager.ActivityEnded     += (_, e) => Console.WriteLine($"Ended     in workflow {e.ActivitySchedule.WorkflowId}");
workflowManager.ActivityException += (_, e) => Console.WriteLine($"Error:    {e.Exception.Message}");

Observability (OpenTelemetry)

LoomKit.Workflows ships built-in tracing via System.Diagnostics.ActivitySource (named after the assembly, LoomKit.Workflows) — no OTel package required in the library itself.

builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
    .WithTracing(tracing => tracing.AddSource("LoomKit.Workflows"));

Every activity dispatch starts a workflows.activity {ActivityType} span, tagged with workflow.id, workflow.name, activity.type, activity.schedule_id, activity.retries_left, activity.queue_name, activity.consumer_name, and activity.outcome (end, fail, continue, pause, fork, join, or join_wait). When paused, activity.resume_tokens lists the pending Actions. ActivityRetryMiddleware<,> adds activity.retried/activity.retries_exhausted events. On an unhandled exception the span records it via Activity.AddException (standard OpenTelemetry semantic conventions) and sets its status to Error.

⚠️ If your tracing backend doesn't have the same access controls as your application logs, avoid throwing exceptions from handlers whose Message carries secrets or personal data — they will flow into your trace exporter as-is.

Trace context propagation across async boundaries: the W3C traceparent of the span active at StartWorkflowAsync/enqueue time is stored on ActivitySchedule.TraceParent and restored as the parent context when the next activity's span starts, so the whole chain — including fork branches and retries (which use the same TraceParent as the failed attempt, appearing as siblings rather than children) — links together in your trace view.

Every ActivitySchedule also carries ActivityStatus.EnqueuedAt, stamped by the queue at enqueue time and never touched afterwards (unlike NextAt, which retries overwrite) — use it to tell "queued/paused for a long time" apart from StartedAt, which only covers time spent actually executing.

Activity tracking

Every IActivity carries ActivityId (unique per instance) and PreviousActivityId (the activity that produced it, null for the first activity of a workflow). Both are populated automatically when extending Activity<TCtx> — including across fork branches and re-paused join points — letting you reconstruct the full execution chain without any handler code.

License

MIT