Absurd In Production

"Absurd is a durable execution system that lives entirely inside Postgres. The core is a single SQL file that defines stored procedures for task management, checkpoint storage, event handling, and claim-based scheduling."

"The model is straightforward: you register tasks, decompose them into steps, and each step acts as a checkpoint. If anything fails, the task retries from the last completed step."

"The project got multiple releases over the last five months. Most of the changes are things you'd expect from a system that people actually started depending on: hardened claim handling, watchdogs that terminate broken workers, deadlock prevention, proper lease management."

"Decomposed steps. The original design only had ctx.step(), where you pass in a function and get back its checkpointed result. That works well for many cases but not all."

Absurd is a durable execution system designed to operate entirely within Postgres, utilizing a single SQL file for task management and event handling. It allows users to register tasks, decompose them into steps, and manage state effectively. Over five months of production use, the system has undergone multiple releases, improving features like claim handling, deadlock prevention, and event race conditions. The design has proven robust, with positive feedback from users regarding its functionality and ease of use.

Read at Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings