dbos-inc/dbos-transact-ts

What it solves

DBOS simplifies the creation of reliable applications by providing durable workflows and queues. It eliminates the need for complex state management, manual recovery logic, or heavyweight external orchestration services when handling failures, such as server crashes during payment processing or interruptions in long-running data pipelines.

How it works

DBOS is a lightweight library that uses a Postgres database to checkpoint the state of a program. Developers annotate ordinary TypeScript functions as "workflows" and "steps"; if a program fails, DBOS automatically resumes execution from the last completed step stored in Postgres. It also provides Postgres-backed primitives for background task queues, event processing, scheduling, and notifications without requiring additional infrastructure.

Who it’s for

It is designed for developers building services that must reliably handle failures, such as payment systems, fault-tolerant data pipelines, or AI agents that rely on unreliable and non-deterministic APIs.

Highlights

• Durable Workflows: Automatically resumes execution from the last completed step after a failure.
• Durable Queues: Background task management with flow control, rate limiting, and deduplication using only Postgres.
• Programmatic Management: Ability to query, pause, resume, or fork failed workflows via a DBOS client.
• Exactly-Once Processing: Ensures events (like webhooks or Kafka messages) trigger workflows exactly once using idempotency keys.
• Durable Scheduling: Supports cron-based scheduling and long-term "durable sleep" that persists through restarts.