Getting started

CONCEPTUAL DOCUMENTATION

Runtime is in development. These guides explain design intent; they are not a released API or installation reference. Read the release policy →

Start with a boundary

This is a design exercise; no Runtime installation is required. Consider an order service that receives a request, checks its shape, maps the data, and calls an inventory service. No endpoint or deployable project is supplied here.

Write down the input owner, output owner, and the result the caller expects. Decide whether completion means “accepted for processing” or “the inventory change succeeded.” Those are different contracts.

Trace the work

Request arrives
  → Check the input contract
  → Transform into the downstream data shape
  → Call the inventory boundary
  → Map the outcome to the caller's contract

For every arrow, identify what can fail and whether anything has already changed. A failed response after a successful remote write is different from a request that never reached the remote system.

Record the design decisions

Define required fields and how invalid input is reported.
Choose a total time budget and allocate downstream timeouts.
Decide which side effects may be retried and how duplicates are handled.
Choose correlation information that does not disclose personal data.
Write success, rejection, timeout, and duplicate-request scenarios.

Continue the exercise

Read flow concepts, HTTP boundaries, and errors and retries. The useful output is a contract and a test plan you can review before choosing implementation details.