Concepts
Cloacina is built from a small set of primitives. This page introduces them and how they fit together; the Glossary has the full, precise definition of every term.
- Task — the unit of work in a workflow: an
asyncfunction that reads and writes a shared context (defined next). The task is also the unit of scheduling — the engine claims, runs, and records one task at a time. - Context — the typed key/value state passed along a workflow’s edges; how data flows from one task to the next.
- Workflow — a DAG of tasks with dependencies. Durable and database-backed: it survives restarts, retries failures, and recovers. See Workflows.
- Computation graph — a DAG whose entire traversal is the unit of scheduling. Once triggered, all nodes run together with in-memory channels between them — deterministic and low-latency. See Computation Graphs.
- Trigger — an event source (a cron schedule, an external event) that starts a workflow or graph.
- Accumulator — an adapter that consumes an external stream or source (Kafka, a polled query, pushed events) and emits boundary events — the discrete events a computation graph reacts to.
- Reactor — a specialized trigger that watches one or more accumulators and fires a computation graph when its criteria are met.
These names are used consistently across the code, CLI, HTTP API, and docs, so what you read here matches what you see in every interface.
Trigger ───────────────▶ Workflow (cron / event starts a durable DAG of tasks)
Accumulator ──events──▶ Reactor ───fires──▶ Computation graph
(one deterministic traversal)
- A workflow is driven by triggers (e.g. a cron schedule) and runs tasks.
- A computation graph is driven by a reactor, which consumes accumulator boundary events.
- The two compose: a workflow can subscribe to a reactor’s firings, and a workflow task can invoke an embedded computation graph.
- Is Cloacina for you? — pick the right primitive and door.
- Features Overview — the full capability catalog.
- Workflows / Computation Graphs — the deep tracks.
- Glossary — every term, precisely defined.