playbook/antigravity-awesome-skills/skills/dbos-golang/references/workflow-background.md

title	impact	impactDescription	tags
Start Workflows in Background	CRITICAL	Background workflows enable reliable async processing	workflow, background, handle, async

Start Workflows in Background

Use dbos.RunWorkflow to start a workflow and get a handle to track it. The workflow is guaranteed to run to completion even if the app is interrupted.

Incorrect (no way to track background work):

func processData(ctx dbos.DBOSContext, data string) (string, error) {
	// ...
	return "processed: " + data, nil
}

// Fire and forget in a goroutine - no durability, no tracking
go func() {
	processData(ctx, data)
}()

Correct (using RunWorkflow):

func processData(ctx dbos.DBOSContext, data string) (string, error) {
	return "processed: " + data, nil
}

func main() {
	// ... setup and launch ...

	// Start workflow, get handle
	handle, err := dbos.RunWorkflow(ctx, processData, "input")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Get the workflow ID
	fmt.Println(handle.GetWorkflowID())

	// Wait for result
	result, err := handle.GetResult()

	// Check status
	status, err := handle.GetStatus()
}

Retrieve a handle later by workflow ID:

handle, err := dbos.RetrieveWorkflowstring
result, err := handle.GetResult()

GetResult supports options:

• dbos.WithHandleTimeout(timeout): Return a timeout error if the workflow doesn't complete within the duration
• dbos.WithHandlePollingInterval(interval): Control how often the database is polled for completion

Reference: Workflows