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I wonder if it's possible to combine statecharts with durable execution engines like Temporal, DBOS, Restate, etc. At work we use Cloudflare Workflows for manag

I wonder if it's possible to combine statecharts with durable execution engines like Temporal, DBOS, Restate, etc. At work we use Cloudflare Workflows for managing onboarding and payment workflows. It generates flowchart diagram that is useful for quickly reasoning about what the workflow does, which I guess is what statecharts is trying to achieve.

apsurd 6mo ago
When you say "it generates flowchart diagrams…" what exactly is generating them? Is it built into cloudflare workers or is it something your team created?
- phpnode 6mo ago
  Cloudflare workers shows a visualisation of your workflow in their dashboard, but it’s imperfect
- hasyimibhar 6mo ago
  It's displayed Cloudflare Workflows dashboard: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workflows/build/visualizer/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/workflows/build/visualizer...
brandensilva 6mo ago
Yeah its bothered me that workflows get all the limelight while state machines are more than capable. They just need durable execution for state charts. I think Cloudflare was going down the durable object actor model for a bit, but not sure if they abandoned that coded project.
_ben_ 6mo ago
I’m building Zindex [1], which is aimed at this exact “visual representation of executable workflows” layer. What I'm solving for is AI-generated diagrams are usually one-shot: Mermaid/SVG/PNG gets emitted, but there’s no durable diagram state to update, validate, diff, or reuse. Zindex makes the diagram itself structured state. Agents use a Diagram Scene Protocol (DSP) to patch nodes, edges, groups, relationships, constraints, and revisions; Zindex handles validation, layout, rendering, versioning, and storage. So for Temporal/DBOS/Restate/Cloudflare Workflows, I’d imagine Zindex sitting beside the durable execution engine: the engine remains the source of truth for execution, while Zindex maintains the persistent, inspectable visual model derived from code or execution history. [1] https://zindex.ai/ https://zindex.ai/

apsurd 6mo ago

When you say "it generates flowchart diagrams…" what exactly is generating them? Is it built into cloudflare workers or is it something your team created?

phpnode 6mo ago
Cloudflare workers shows a visualisation of your workflow in their dashboard, but it’s imperfect
hasyimibhar 6mo ago
It's displayed Cloudflare Workflows dashboard: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workflows/build/visualizer/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/workflows/build/visualizer...

brandensilva 6mo ago

Yeah its bothered me that workflows get all the limelight while state machines are more than capable. They just need durable execution for state charts. I think Cloudflare was going down the durable object actor model for a bit, but not sure if they abandoned that coded project.

_ben_ 6mo ago

I’m building Zindex [1], which is aimed at this exact “visual representation of executable workflows” layer. What I'm solving for is AI-generated diagrams are usually one-shot: Mermaid/SVG/PNG gets emitted, but there’s no durable diagram state to update, validate, diff, or reuse. Zindex makes the diagram itself structured state. Agents use a Diagram Scene Protocol (DSP) to patch nodes, edges, groups, relationships, constraints, and revisions; Zindex handles validation, layout, rendering, versioning, and storage. So for Temporal/DBOS/Restate/Cloudflare Workflows, I’d imagine Zindex sitting beside the durable execution engine: the engine remains the source of truth for execution, while Zindex maintains the persistent, inspectable visual model derived from code or execution history. [1] https://zindex.ai/ https://zindex.ai/