resumability

resumability

Five-step research job (plan → gather → synthesize → critique → finalize) that checkpoints after every step. Crash mid-flight, resume on next invocation, no work lost.

Before ARCP

Long jobs survive crashes only if the team built their own checkpoint store, retry contract, and dedupe layer. Most don't. Crash means restart; restart means re-spending tokens; "did this already run?" turns into a SQL detective story.

With ARCP

// every step ends with two envelopes
emitProgress($client, $jobId, 'synthesize');
emitCheckpoint($client, $jobId, 'synthesize');

// resume picks up at the step *after* the last checkpoint
$last = issueResume($client, $jobId, $afterMessageId, $checkpointId);
$nextIdx = (int) array_search($last, STEPS, true) + 1;

Per-step idempotency_key keeps execution single across retries: the runtime returns the prior outcome if the same step is re-issued.

Try it

# crash after `synthesize`. Prints the resume token.
CRASH_AFTER_STEP=synthesize php samples/resumability/main.php

# resume — runtime replays up to the last checkpoint, we run from
# the next step.
RESUME_JOB_ID=...  RESUME_AFTER_MSG_ID=...  RESUME_CHECKPOINT_ID=... \
  php samples/resumability/main.php

ARCP primitives

• Resumability — RFC §19, after_message_id + checkpoint_id.
• Job lifecycle + checkpoints — §10.
• idempotency_key semantics — §6.4.
• DATA_LOSS on retention expiry — §19, §18.2.

File tour

• main.php — start fresh vs resume. exit(137) on the crash step to demonstrate process death.
• steps.php — runStep() step-body stub.

Variations

• Plug a workflow checkpointer that doubles to a SQLite store so checkpoints survive ARCP retention expiry too.
• Branch on critique severity: low → finalize; high → loop back to synthesize with the critique appended.
• Emit kind: thought between steps for reasoning_streams to consume.