I see elsewhere you mention that you use at most once processing. So, I was possibly mistaken that the function can be called more than once assuming you did th

I see elsewhere you mention that you use at most once processing. So, I was possibly mistaken that the function can be called more than once assuming you did this right (cleared the job before even invoking the job). My primary point still stands: this is not idempotent, at least not in the way that matters. This is single-try processing. If all you are doing is returning a synchronous error to the user so that they can retry (and again, every other operation leading up to the one that failed to process is actually idempotent) then this would not be catastrophic. The issue is when people start to think that this actually is idempotence, i.e., they attempt to reuse an idempotence key across requests when the first one straight up failed (or not, who knows). In other words, don't use the idempotence helper if you care about the thing happening. If it's optional, sure, go for it. You could rename it to "tryOnce", or "maybeRun" rather than "idempotence" and it'd be more accurate / less misleading.