Top all-time · #9602
Obelisk Workflow Runtime
Company blog · obeli.sk/blogsystemsprogramming
Obelisk Workflow Runtime is the company blog at obeli.sk, writing about systems and programming. Since 2025, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “Comparing Obelisk with DBOS”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-04, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The linked post is part 1 of a comparison between DBOS and Obelisk, a workflow runtime. The only comment is a bare link to it, with no comment on the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Obelisk is a fast open-source durable and deterministic workflow runtime powered by WebAssembly. Single binary, SQLite or Postgres, crash resilient.
Most-linked posts?
- Comparing Obelisk with DBOS4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-11-27
- Challenging the Fastest OSS Workflow Engine4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-29
What Hacker News says?
The structured concurrency paradigm in workflows is stricter to what I'm reading here [1]. The whole execution model is different from the Task [2], as workflows are transparently unloaded and replayed. Obelisk has a concept called join sets [3], where child executions are submitted and awaited. In the future I plan on adding cancellation and allow custom cleanup functions. [1] https://github.com/WebAssembly/compone…
Comment linking /docs/latest/concepts/workflows/join-sets/
on “Show HN: Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine”Submitted Show HN: Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine as a story · 103 points
HN discussionCheck out https://obeli.sk/blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
Comment linking /blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
on “SQLite is all you need for durable workflows”Submitted Obelisk 0.24.1 as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHi, I wrote a comparison blog post between Obelisk and the Java version of DBOS a couple of months ago: https://obeli.sk/blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
Comment linking /blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
on “SQLite is all you need for durable workflows”Submitted SQLite is all you need for durable workflows as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://obeli.sk/blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
Comment linking /blog/comparing-dbos-part-1/
on “Obelisk 0.32: Cancellation, WebAPI, Postgres”Submitted Obelisk 0.42: Durable Agents, Layered Sandboxes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Comparing Obelisk with DBOS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Challenging the Fastest OSS Workflow Engine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Taming AI-Assisted Code with Deterministic Workflows as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Comparing Rust, JavaScript and Go for Authoring WASM Components as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted When Scope Lies: The Wildcard Pattern Drop Footgun in Rust as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Comparing Obelisk with DBOS as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Challenging the Fastest OSS Workflow Engine as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Challenging the Fastest OSS Workflow Engine as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Challenging the Fastest OSS Workflow Engine as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Obelisk 0.25.4 and handling of WASM traps as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Obelisk Deterministic Workflow Engine as a story · 1 points
HN discussion