Demo-tutorial

This repo contains the code used in the Comparing Obelisk with DBOS blog post, updated for Obelisk 0.42 with native JavaScript support.

The tutorial shows a serial and a parallel durable workflow, each driving a simple step activity.

JavaScript (default)

No build step required. Just install Obelisk and run:

export OBELISK_API_TOKEN=$(obelisk generate token)
obelisk server run --server-config server.toml --app-config app.toml --deployment deployment.toml

The server starts three endpoints:

• Web UI: http://localhost:8080
• Webhook: http://localhost:9090
• API: http://localhost:5005

Trigger the workflows:

curl http://localhost:9090/serial
curl http://localhost:9090/parallel

Inspecting executions

The API port requires a token. The server above accepts the OBELISK_API_TOKEN exported before it started; export the same value in the shell you query from.

List top-level executions (one per webhook call):

export OBELISK_API_AUTH="Authorization: Bearer $OBELISK_API_TOKEN"
curl -s -H "$OBELISK_API_AUTH" "http://localhost:5005/v1/executions"

[
  {
    "execution_id": "E_01KN209P2PCVPGAPRC3DBAC92C",
    "ffqn": "wasi:http/incoming-handler.handle",
    "pending_state": { "status": "finished", "result_kind": "ok", ... },
    "created_at": "2026-03-31T13:11:01.541897881Z",
    ...
  }
]

Each entry has the execution ID, the FFQN (all webhooks use wasi:http/incoming-handler.handle), its state, and its creation time.

Fetch logs for a webhook execution (includes its console.log output):

EXECUTION_ID=E_01KN209P2PCVPGAPRC3DBAC92C
curl -s -H "$OBELISK_API_AUTH" "http://localhost:5005/v1/executions/${EXECUTION_ID}/logs"

To see the child executions spawned by a webhook, the workflow and its activities, use show_derived=true. Narrow to tutorial executions with ffqn_prefix:

curl -s -H "$OBELISK_API_AUTH" "http://localhost:5005/v1/executions?show_derived=true&ffqn_prefix=tutorial:demo"

The CLI reads the same token, so obelisk execution list prints a compact summary.

Then fetch logs for any individual execution by its ID. console.log calls in workflows and activities both appear as log entries.

Open the Web UI at http://localhost:8080 for a visual trace of each execution. When it asks for authentication, paste the value of $OBELISK_API_TOKEN. Click an execution and enable Autoload children to see the full hierarchy of webhook → workflow → activities, with timestamps and structured log entries.

Crash recovery

Start the serial workflow, then kill the server while it's running:

# terminal 1
curl http://localhost:9090/serial

# terminal 2 — kill mid-execution
kill $(pgrep obelisk)

Restart the server — the deployment is stored in the database, so no --deployment flag is needed. Obelisk resumes the workflow from its last completed step:

obelisk server run --server-config server.toml --app-config app.toml

Rust (advanced)

The rust/ directory contains the original Rust-based implementation. It requires Rust and Cargo to build:

just build-rust
just serve-rust