Cookbook

A curated collection of workflow patterns with clean, copy-paste code examples for real use cases.

Common Patterns

Saga — Coordinate multi-step transactions with automatic rollback when a step fails
Batching — Process large collections in parallel batches with failure isolation
Rate Limiting — Handle 429 responses and transient failures with RetryableError and backoff
Fan-Out — Send to multiple channels in parallel with independent failure handling
Scheduling — Use durable sleep to schedule actions minutes, hours, or weeks ahead
Idempotency — Ensure side effects happen exactly once, even when steps retry
Webhooks — Receive HTTP callbacks from external services and process them durably
Conditional Routing — Route payloads to different step handlers based on content
Child Workflows — Spawn and orchestrate child workflows from a parent

Durable Agent — Replace a stateless AI agent with one that survives crashes and retries tool calls
Tool Streaming — Stream real-time progress updates from tools to the UI
Human-in-the-Loop — Pause an agent for human approval, then resume based on the decision
Tool Orchestration — Choose between step-level and workflow-level tools, or combine both
Stop Workflow — Gracefully cancel a running agent workflow using a hook signal

AI SDK — Use AI SDK model providers, tool calling, and streaming inside durable workflows
Chat SDK — Build durable chat sessions with workflow persistence and AI SDK chat primitives
Sandbox — Orchestrate Vercel Sandbox lifecycle inside durable workflows

Serializable Steps — Wrap non-serializable objects so they cross the workflow boundary
Durable Objects — Model long-lived stateful entities as workflows
Isomorphic Packages — Publish packages that work inside and outside the workflow runtime
Secure Credentials — Encrypt secrets so they never appear in the event log
Custom Serialization — Make custom classes survive workflow serialization
Publishing Libraries — Ship npm packages that export reusable workflow functions