Standalone Nexus Operation
What is a Standalone Nexus Operation?
A Standalone Nexus Operation is a top-level Nexus Operation Execution started directly by a Client, without using a caller Workflow. Instead of calling a Nexus Operation from within a Workflow Definition, you execute it directly from a Nexus Client created from the Temporal SDK Client and bound to a Nexus Endpoint and Service.
Standalone Nexus Operations use the same Service contract, Operation handlers, and Worker setup as Workflow-driven Operations — only the caller side differs. The same Operation can be executed as a Standalone Nexus Operation and as a Workflow-driven Nexus Operation with no handler code changes.
If you need to orchestrate multiple Nexus Operations, call them from a Workflow. But if you just need to execute a single Nexus Operation across Namespace boundaries, use a Standalone Nexus Operation.
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Use cases
Standalone Nexus Operations are useful when application code outside of a Workflow needs to invoke functionality exposed by another team's Namespace through a Nexus Endpoint — for example, calling a shared service from a starter program, a job runner, an HTTP handler, or a script — with all the reliability, retries, and observability of Nexus, but without paying the cost of a caller Workflow.
Key features
- Execute any Nexus Operation as a top-level primitive without the overhead of a caller Workflow
- Same Service contract, Operation handlers, and Worker setup as Workflow-driven Operations
- Supports both synchronous and asynchronous (Workflow-backed) Nexus Operations
- At-least-once execution with automatic retries by the Nexus Machinery
- Get a handle to retrieve results, with the Operation token for asynchronous Operations
- List and count Standalone Nexus Operation Executions using List Filter queries
- Execute the same Operation from a Workflow or standalone with no handler code changes
Migrate a single-Operation caller Workflow to a Standalone Nexus Operation
A common pattern is a caller Workflow whose only purpose is to invoke a single Nexus Operation. When that's all the Workflow does, you can drop the caller Workflow entirely and call the Operation as a Standalone Nexus Operation. The handler Namespace's Service contract, Operation handlers, and Workers do not change — only the caller side does.
Considerations when migrating:
- If the caller Workflow does more than one Operation call, or has business logic between calls, keep the Workflow. Standalone Nexus Operations are only a fit when a single top-level Operation is all the Workflow did.
- Pick a stable Operation ID if you previously relied on Workflow ID reuse semantics for deduplication.
- Update Visibility queries that filtered by caller Workflow attributes.
For SDK-specific syntax, see the per-SDK guide — for example Go: Standalone Nexus Operations.
Observability
You can use List Filters to query Standalone Nexus Operation Executions by Endpoint, Service, Operation, status, and other attributes using the SDK.
CountNexusOperations returns the total number of Standalone Nexus Operation Executions matching a
filter. This is the total count of executions (running, completed, failed, etc.) — not the number of
queued tasks.
Pre-release limitations
Standalone Nexus Operations are at Pre-release. APIs are experimental and may be subject to backwards-incompatible changes.
Temporal CLI support
Standalone Nexus Operations require a Pre-release build of the Temporal CLI that includes
the temporal nexus operation command family. All commands are Experimental.
Download the Pre-release build from the
v1.7.3-standalone-nexus-operations release
on GitHub and follow the platform-specific install instructions on that page.
Verify the installation:
temporal --version
The temporal nexus operation subcommand supports Standalone Nexus Operations with commands
including: start, execute, result, list, count, describe, cancel, and terminate.
The Nexus Endpoint must already exist on the server — create it with
temporal operator nexus endpoint create.
Temporal Cloud support
Standalone Nexus Operations in Temporal Cloud is available as a Pre-release feature.