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Standalone Activities Feature Guide

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Standalone Activities are Activities that run independently, without being orchestrated by a Workflow. Instead of starting an Activity from within a Workflow Definition, you start a Standalone Activity directly from a Temporal Client.

The way you write the Activity and register it with a Worker is identical to Workflow Activities. The only difference is that you execute a Standalone Activity directly from your Temporal Client.

tip

New to Standalone Activities? Start with the Standalone Activities Quickstart.

This page covers the following:

info

This documentation uses source code from the standalone-activity sample.

Start a Standalone Activity without waiting for the result​

Starting a Standalone Activity means sending a request to the Temporal Server to durably enqueue your Activity job, without waiting for it to be executed by your Worker.

Use start method of the client or the typed interface to start your Standalone Activity and get a handle:

standalone-activity/src/execute.ts

const handle = await activitiesClient.start('greet', {
  ...activityOptions,
  id: activityId,
  args: ['Temporal'],
});

Or use the Temporal CLI:

temporal activity start \
  --type greet \
  --activity-id my-standalone-activity-id \
  --task-queue hello-standalone-activities \
  --start-to-close-timeout 10s \
  --input '"World"'

Get a handle to an existing Standalone Activity​

You can also use getHandle to create a handle to a previously started Standalone Activity. Because the client doesn't know how the Activity was started, this method is not available in the typed interface. The method takes an optional type argument to constrain the Activity result type, but correctness of this argument is not verified.

standalone-activity/src/execute.ts

const newHandle = client.activity.getHandle<string>(activityId);

You can now use the handle to wait for the result, describe, cancel, or terminate the Activity.

Wait for the result of a Standalone Activity​

Under the hood, calling execute is the same as calling start to durably enqueue the Standalone Activity, and then calling await handle.result() to wait for the Activity to be executed and fetch the result:

standalone-activity/src/execute.ts

console.log(await handle.result()); // Hello, Temporal!

Or use the Temporal CLI to wait for a result by Activity Id:

temporal activity result --activity-id my-standalone-activity-id

List Standalone Activities​

Use list method of the client to list Standalone Activity Executions that match a List Filter query. The result is an AsyncIterable that yields ActivityExecutionInfo entries.

These APIs return only Standalone Activity Executions. Activities running inside Workflows are not included.

const query = 'TaskQueue="hello-standalone-activities"';

for await (const a of client.activity.list(query)) {
  console.log(
    `${a.activityId} | ${a.activityRunId} | ${a.activityType} | ${a.status} | ${a.closeTime?.toISOString()}`,
  );
}

The sample file standalone-activity/src/list.ts shows how to list and count activities.

Run it:

npm run list

Or use the Temporal CLI:

temporal activity list

The query parameter accepts the same List Filter syntax used for Workflow Visibility. For example, "ActivityType = 'MyActivity' AND Status = 'Running'".

Count Standalone Activities​

Use count method of the client to count Standalone Activity Executions that match a List Filter query. This returns the total count of executions (running, completed, failed, etc.) - not the number of queued tasks. It works the same way as counting Workflow Executions. The same query will work for both listing and counting.

standalone-activity/src/list.ts

const { count } = await client.activity.count(query);
console.log(`Total activities: ${count}`);

The sample file standalone-activity/src/list.ts shows how to list and count activities.

Run it:

npm run list

Or use the Temporal CLI:

temporal activity count

Run Standalone Activities with Temporal Cloud​

The Worker and Client code in the Standalone Activities Quickstart use loadClientConnectConfig, so the same code works against Temporal Cloud - configure the connection via environment variables or a TOML profile. No code changes are needed.

For a step-by-step guide on connecting to Temporal Cloud, including Namespace creation, certificate generation, and authentication setup in the Cloud UI, see Connect to Temporal Cloud.

Connect with mTLS​

Set these environment variables with values from your Temporal Cloud Namespace settings:

export TEMPORAL_ADDRESS=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>.tmprl.cloud:7233
export TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>
export TEMPORAL_TLS_CLIENT_CERT_PATH='path/to/your/client.pem'
export TEMPORAL_TLS_CLIENT_KEY_PATH='path/to/your/client.key'

Connect with an API key​

Set these environment variables with values from your Temporal Cloud API key settings:

export TEMPORAL_ADDRESS=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>.tmprl.cloud:7233
export TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>
export TEMPORAL_API_KEY=<your-api-key>

Then run the Worker and starter code as shown in the Standalone Activities Quickstart.