Basic Vercel-function-launching-workflow use case

[kevindente]

I feel like I'm missing something very basic about Vercel Workflow. I'm trying to solve what seems like a very basic scenario - a Vercel function that needs to run a long-running, multi-step process that in aggregate will take longer than the 13 minute max runtime on a function. The function will be triggered by a Cron job.

I can't find any examples of this kind of basic setup. All of the samples seem to involve Next.js, other runtimes like Hono or Express or Vite. Is there no example of this simple function use case? Am I thinking about Workflow incorrectly, such that it can't actually be used to solve this problem?

[kevindente]

After various experimentations with manually wiring up the workflow endpoints to a Vercel function, I'm giving up for now. It appears that the built files are not compatible with VercelRequest, because it doesn't include the full URL path in request.url. At some point flow.js tries to construct a URL object from req.url, and it throws because it's not a complete URL.

Any comments from the dev team about plans to support Vercel functions as a hosting environment for Workflow?

[TooTallNate]

There is a standalone Vercel Build Output API mode (see here for example), but it's not really intended for use outside of e2e testing.

Can I ask why the aversion to using one of the supported frameworks? I typically will use Hono if I'm just looking for something lightweight to deploy workflow functions.

[kevindente]

I tried using the workflow build cli and wire it up manually to Vercel function endpoints, and it doesn't work (as described in my last post).

Basically, I already have a REST API implemented with native Vercel functions, and want to add a long-running process to that micro service. I guess I could have ported it all over to using something like Hono, but given that Workflow and Functions are both native Vercel constructs, it seems weird that they don't Just Work together seamlessly.