Eager Workflow Start

2/12/2025

This post details techniques to improve workflow performance by optimizing response time, maintaining durability and reliability. It introduces the 'Early Return' pattern to split workflows into synchronous and asynchronous parts for faster user feedback, demonstrating a 40-50% reduction in latency. It also explains 'Local Activities' which run in the same process as workflows, saving round-trip calls to the Temporal Service and achieving 60-70% faster results. Combining both techniques can reduce workflow response time by up to 91%. The post also touches upon 'Eager Workflow Start' as a way to make workflows more local.

4/29/2024

Introduces Eager Workflow Start (EWS), an experimental feature to reduce workflow start latency. Details the mechanism by which the starter and worker interact directly, bypassing server matching. Provides performance metrics showing significant latency reduction (43% p50, 40% p99). Discusses limitations including the co-location requirement for starter and worker and lack of support for worker versioning with build IDs. Includes a 'Hello World' example in Go demonstrating how to enable EWS by sharing a client connection and setting the `EnableEagerStart` flag.