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Standalone Nexus Operation

SUPPORT, STABILITY, and DEPENDENCY INFO

Standalone Nexus Operations are at Pre-release. APIs are experimental and may be subject to backwards-incompatible changes.

What is a Standalone Nexus Operation?​

A Standalone Nexus Operation is a top-level Nexus Operation Execution started directly by a Client, without using a caller Workflow. Instead of calling a Nexus Operation from within a Workflow Definition, you execute it directly from a Nexus Client created from the Temporal SDK Client and bound to a Nexus Endpoint and Service.

Standalone Nexus Operation vs. Workflow - Standalone Nexus Operations execute a single Operation across Namespaces as a top-level primitive, while Workflows orchestrate multiple Nexus Operation stepsStandalone Nexus Operation vs. Workflow - Standalone Nexus Operations execute a single Operation across Namespaces as a top-level primitive, while Workflows orchestrate multiple Nexus Operation steps

Standalone Nexus Operations use the same Service contract, Operation handlers, and Worker setup as Workflow-driven Operations — only the caller side differs. The same Operation can be executed as a Standalone Nexus Operation and as a Workflow-driven Nexus Operation with no handler code changes.

If you need to orchestrate multiple Nexus Operations, call them from a Workflow. But if you just need to execute a single Nexus Operation across Namespace boundaries, use a Standalone Nexus Operation.

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Use cases​

Standalone Nexus Operations are useful when application code outside of a Workflow needs to invoke functionality exposed by another team's Namespace through a Nexus Endpoint — for example, calling a shared service from a starter program, a job runner, an HTTP handler, or a script — with all the reliability, retries, and observability of Nexus, but without paying the cost of a caller Workflow.

Key features​

  • Execute any Nexus Operation as a top-level primitive without the overhead of a caller Workflow
  • Same Service contract, Operation handlers, and Worker setup as Workflow-driven Operations
  • Supports both synchronous and asynchronous (Workflow-backed) Nexus Operations
  • At-least-once execution with automatic retries by the Nexus Machinery
  • Addressable — get a handle to retrieve results, with the Operation token for asynchronous Operations
  • Visibility — list and count Standalone Nexus Operation Executions using List Filter queries
  • Dual use — execute the same Operation from a Workflow or standalone with no handler code changes

Observability​

You can use List Filters to query Standalone Nexus Operation Executions by Endpoint, Service, Operation, status, and other attributes using the SDK.

CountNexusOperations returns the total number of Standalone Nexus Operation Executions matching a filter. This is the total count of executions (running, completed, failed, etc.) — not the number of queued tasks.

Pre-release limitations​

Standalone Nexus Operations are at Pre-release. APIs are experimental and may be subject to backwards-incompatible changes.

Temporal Cloud support​

Standalone Activities in Temporal Cloud is available as a Public Preview feature.