Workflows are coming to Supabase

Summary

Supabase is developing Workflows, an Elixir-based orchestration engine designed to coordinate complex serverless tasks and event-driven logic. Standard serverless and database-triggered functions often struggle with delayed execution and queuing without external cron processes. To solve this with native Postgres integration, the new engine adopts the open-source Amazon States Language specification to orchestrate functions across platforms including AWS, GCP, Azure, OpenFaaS, and Postgres itself. Execution states, jobs, queues, and logs are deeply integrated with Postgres using the Oban job processing library, though transient in-memory workers are also supported. The engine responds directly to HTTP calls or database change events delivered through Supabase Realtime.

Context

Standard function providers and database-triggered functions lack built-in queuing and scheduling capabilities for delayed actions without relying on self-managed cron jobs. Furthermore, existing open-source workflow tools lack deep integration with Postgres.

Approach / What changed

Supabase is building an open-source Elixir orchestration engine that interprets Amazon States Language. It coordinates functions across cloud providers and Postgres, utilizing Oban for Postgres-backed queues, jobs, and state storage, with support for persistent and transient execution.

Takeaways

• Supabase Workflows uses the open-source Amazon States Language to define state transitions and coordinate functions across external providers and Postgres without running code itself.
• Workflows support both default persistent mode, which relies on Postgres and Oban to survive server restarts, and transient mode for high-frequency in-memory execution.
• Workflows can be triggered by direct HTTP calls or database events like inserts, allowing state constructs like Map and Choice to process batch event payloads.

Related reading

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  Supabase announced a series of platform updates for March 2021, headlined by the launch of Supabase Storage and new local development capabilities. The new storage offering integrates an open-source Fastify and TypeScript API backed by S3, while direct database connections now bundle PgBouncer for connection pooling. Developers can run the platform locally via the Supabase CLI, utilize Docker tooling for self-hosting, and access the open-sourced Supabase UI component library. Community contributions brought OAuth scopes to Supabase Auth for requesting elevated third-party provider permissions, alongside newly published free and pro pricing tiers. In addition, development is underway on an Elixir-based workflow engine compatible with the Amazon States Language for automated event handling.

  Paul Copplestone

• Supabase · May 5, 2021

  Supabase Beta April 2021

  Supabase focused on platform stability, security enhancements, and community support during its April 2021 beta update cycle. To address visual accessibility needs for developers with astigmatisms or those operating in brightly lit environments, the team delivered Light Mode within the dashboard settings. The release also introduced OpenAPI-powered Storage API documentation, community translations for the main repository spanning nineteen distinct languages, and an experimental synchronization server connecting Postgres with Stripe. Dashboard components are systematically migrating into an open-source UI library, establishing necessary foundations for local development tooling and self-hosted environments. Additionally, the team reported substantial contributor growth across its realtime server and UI repositories while continuing engineering on a Workflows engine aimed at a July release.