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Version: 2.0 prerelease

Introduction

Durable Workflow is a Laravel-native durable orchestration engine. You write your workflow as an ordinary PHP class; it runs on your queue worker, survives process restarts, and resumes exactly where it left off.

First-time 2.0 prerelease path​

If you are evaluating the 2.0 prerelease for the first time, start with the 2.0 Prerelease Quickstart. It uses published artifacts only and walks Laravel, Python, and operator paths to an observable status=completed workflow state.

The quickstart pins the current prerelease artifacts directly: durable-workflow==0.4.84 for Python, durableworkflow/server:0.2.261 for the standalone server, and VERSION=0.1.75 for the CLI installer.

pip install durable-workflow==0.4.84
export DW_SERVER_IMAGE=durableworkflow/server:0.2.261
curl -fsSL https://durable-workflow.com/install.sh | VERSION=0.1.75 sh

The persona reference pages are also versioned 2.0 pages: Python SDK, Standalone Server, and CLI.

Do you need a workflow?​

You probably need a workflow if:

  • The process spans minutes, hours, or days
  • You need to wait for a human approval step
  • You need to wait for a webhook or other external event
  • You need to pause and continue later without keeping a process running
  • You need to be able to restart after a crash without causing bugs or duplicating work

If your task is "run five queued jobs in order and bail on the first failure," Laravel's job chain is a better fit. Durable Workflow is for the cases where the next step depends on an external event, a wait, or a decision that can't be decided up front.

Want to learn by example?​

The fastest way to see Durable Workflow run end to end is the Sample App. It is a runnable Laravel 13 application with one workflow per pattern surface (deterministic chains, elapsed-time measurement, microservice coordination, browser automation, webhook-started workflows, AI activity loops, and a signal-driven travel-agent saga), each wired into both an artisan command and the MCP server. Clone it, run one command, and watch the run land in Waterline. When you are ready to write your own pattern, the Contribute a Sample guide walks through the full submission flow.