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Worker Ecosystems

Pattern: Autonomous, specialized processors that scale elastically.

The Concept​

Instead of building large, monolithic services, you build ecosystems of specialized workers — each handling one specific business task.

A worker ecosystem is a community of processors that:

  • Specialize — Each worker type does one thing well
  • Replicate — Scale by adding more instances
  • Evolve — Deploy new versions alongside old ones
  • Retire — Gracefully drain and replace workers

Why Workers?​

Traditional approach: Build a large order processing service that handles orders, sends notifications, updates inventory, processes payments, etc.

Worker approach: Build specialized workers:

  • order-processor — Processes orders only
  • notification-sender — Sends notifications only
  • inventory-sync — Syncs inventory only
  • payment-processor — Handles payments only

Each worker is simpler, easier to test, and can scale independently.

Core Principles​

Stateless Between Workers, Stateful Within​

Workers don't share state with each other. They can hold state during their processing cycle for efficiency, but that state is cleared between cycles. This makes them:

  • Scalable — Add more instances anytime
  • Replaceable — Stop and start without data loss
  • Independent — One worker failure doesn't affect others

Autonomous Operation​

Workers manage themselves:

  • Fetch their own work from queues
  • Handle their own errors and retries
  • Report their own health
  • Scale based on queue depth

Single Responsibility​

Each worker type handles one business task. This keeps them:

  • Focused — Easy to understand and maintain
  • Testable — Simple to verify behavior
  • Deployable — Update independently

Evolution, Not Migration​

The magic of worker ecosystems is gradual evolution:

  1. Deploy new worker version (v2)
  2. It starts consuming new work alongside v1
  3. Old workers (v1) finish their current jobs and drain
  4. Eventually all work flows to v2
  5. Retire v1 workers

Zero downtime. Zero "maintenance windows." Continuous evolution.

Learn More​

For detailed implementation guidance, see:

Worker Ecosystems: Evolve, don't migrate.