Durable Workflow (formerly Laravel Workflow) is a package for the Laravel web framework that provides tools for defining and managing workflows and activities. A workflow is a series of interconnected activities that are executed in a specific order to achieve a desired result. Activities are individual tasks or pieces of logic that are executed as part of a workflow.

Durable Workflow can be used to automate and manage complex processes, such as agentic workflows (AI-driven), financial transactions, data analysis, data pipelines, microservices, job tracking, user signup flows, sagas and other business processes. By using Durable Workflow, developers can break down large, complex processes into smaller, modular units that can be easily maintained and updated.

Some key features and benefits of Durable Workflow include:

• Support for defining workflows and activities using simple, declarative PHP classes.
• Tools for starting, monitoring, and managing workflows, including support for queuing and parallel execution.
• Built-in support for handling errors and retries, ensuring that workflows are executed reliably and consistently.
• Integration with Laravel's queue and event systems, allowing workflows to be executed asynchronously on worker servers.
• Extensive documentation and a growing community of developers who use and contribute to Durable Workflow.

Documentation

Documentation for Durable Workflow can be found on the website.

Community

You can find us in the GitHub discussions and also on our Discord channel.

Sample App

There's also a sample application that you can run directly from GitHub in your browser.

Usage

Install the embedded Laravel runtime:

composer require durable-workflow/workflow:^2.0@alpha

This package owns Laravel service-provider integration, migrations, Eloquent models, queue jobs, replay persistence, and in-process workflow and activity authoring. It does not include a client or remote-worker runtime for the standalone server.

1. Create a workflow

use function Workflow\V2\activity;
use Workflow\V2\Workflow;

class MyWorkflow extends Workflow
{
    public function handle(string $name): string
    {
        $result = activity(MyActivity::class, $name);

        return $result;
    }
}

2. Create an activity

use Workflow\V2\Activity;

class MyActivity extends Activity
{
    public function handle(string $name): string
    {
        return "Hello, {$name}!";
    }
}

3. Run the workflow

use Workflow\V2\WorkflowStub;

$workflow = WorkflowStub::make(MyWorkflow::class);
$workflow->start('world');

$workflow->output();
=> 'Hello, world!'

Using a dedicated storage connection

By default all workflow persistence (every Eloquent model and every migration shipped by this package) lives on your application's default database connection. To isolate workflow state on its own database — for separate backup/retention/scaling, a different driver, or tenant isolation — point the package at a dedicated connection:

// config/workflows.php
'storage' => [
    // null => the application's default connection (the default, unchanged behavior).
    'connection' => Env::dw('DW_STORAGE_CONNECTION', 'WORKFLOW_STORAGE_CONNECTION', null),
],

# .env — must match a key under config('database.connections')
DW_STORAGE_CONNECTION=durable_workflow

When set, both the models and the migrations are routed to that connection, so php artisan migrate creates the workflow tables there and all reads/writes target it. Leaving it null preserves today's behavior exactly.

The schema/database is governed by the connection's own configuration — use search_path for PostgreSQL or database for MySQL on that connection. There is no separate schema option.

Embedded and Polyglot Usage

This package provides the application-embedded version of Durable Workflow for Laravel.

Use it when your workflows and activities run within a Laravel application and you do not need workers written in other languages.

For standalone or polyglot orchestration, run the standalone Durable Workflow server and install the PHP SDK in framework-neutral PHP applications and remote workers:

composer require durable-workflow/sdk:^0.1.1

The standalone server allows PHP, Python, Rust, and other supported SDKs to participate in the same workflow system.

Deployment mode	PHP package	Runtime owner
Embedded Laravel	durable-workflow/workflow	The Laravel application owns durable state and queue execution.
Standalone server host	durable-workflow/workflow inside durable-workflow/server	The server hosts Workflow's engine contracts and persistence.
Standalone PHP client or remote worker	durable-workflow/sdk	The SDK owns authentication, transport, protocol types, client operations, and worker polling.

Migrating an alpha standalone worker

Remove direct use of Workflow\V2\Client\* and Workflow\V2\Worker\*, then install durable-workflow/sdk. Create a DurableWorkflow\Client for standalone-server operations and a DurableWorkflow\Worker for remote task execution. The removed alpha namespaces have no aliases or compatibility wrappers; embedded Laravel workflow and activity classes remain supported by this package.

Sponsors

The Durable Workflow package is sustained by the community via sponsors and volunteers.

• Andriy Karpishyn
• Freispace Resource Scheduling
• Hugo Cox
• Translate a Book

Monitoring

Waterline is a separate UI that works nicely alongside Horizon. Think of Waterline as being to workflows what Horizon is to queues. Waterline is a technical runtime UI for operators: use it for fleet health, queues, waits, retries, failures, repair, and history diagnostics. Business dashboards should read app-owned milestone projections keyed by workflow_id and run_id, not Waterline data or workflow runtime tables.

Dashboard View

Workflow View

Refer to https://github.com/durable-workflow/waterline for installation and configuration instructions.