Automate Your Life: Building a Workflow Engine in TypeScript
summary
Claims a runnable TypeScript workflow engine that actually enforces a DAG, stores templates and runs in Postgres, queues work on Redis and executes workers via a promise chain, and wires a web hook trigger to steps implemented as a plugin registry. Uses React Flow for the UI and TypeBox for schemas, and supports IoT and LLM plugins as concrete examples. Surprising tradeoff is zero error handling so a single step failure aborts the run. Conditionals use a conditional JSON rule engine and plugins are literally ten lines to write.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:00Workflow engines intro
- 1:05What is a workflow engine
- 2:11Building a toy engine
- 3:15Practical use case
- 5:43Graph theory basics
- 7:29Validating workflow graphs
- 8:58Tech stack
- 9:41Key workflow concepts
- 13:16Lazy dev and error handling
- 14:21Plugin ecosystem
- 16:29How engine executes
- 21:09Dependency execution
- 23:41Conditional logic with JSON
- 25:06Branching in workflows
- 25:26Project status
related talks
23mTypeScript Ruined My Life (In a Good Way)
28mAn introduction to the Workflow Development Kit
32mTooling Like It's 2025
38mWeb Applications of the Future With TypeScript and GraphQL
43mFlow - Am I Your Type?
30mPowerful REST in a GraphQL world
30mUsing Hooks and Codegen
12mHow TypeScript Ruined My Life (In a Good Way)