Tactors SDK

Tactors is a typed, builder-first actor SDK for Go. You describe state, handlers, activities, and runtime knobs in one fluent API and receive a deterministic actor description that every runtime can consume—no code generation or interface{} plumbing. We still touch Go’s %T formatting to label types, but handler routing stays strongly typed.

What you get

• Typed actor builders: fix state with actors.NewStateful, get typed commands/queries/activities via helper embeds, and build once for every runtime consumer.
• Declarative knobs: retries, timeouts, caches, queue overrides, snapshots, and validators live on the builder so intent is obvious.
• Temporal-first runtime: one actors.Description powers worker registration, Ask/Query plumbing, and the deterministic testsuite—no alt runtimes or codegen.
• Ops hooks: spans/metrics around commands and cross-actor calls; rotation/versioning via WithSnapshot and actors.Patch.

Quick start

1. New to the ecosystem? Read docs/NEW_TO_TEMPORAL.md and docs/NEW_TO_ACTORS.md for the quick primers.
2. Build the smallest actor in docs/GETTING_STARTED.md and run it against the Temporal testsuite (go test).
3. Browse runnable samples in docs/EXAMPLES.md (code lives at https://github.com/tactors/samples).

Docs map

• Builder reference: docs/ACTOR_BUILDER.md.
• Runtime/worker behavior: docs/RUNTIME_TEMPORAL.md.
• Temporal-first map: docs/INDEX.md and docs/TEMPORAL_MENTAL_MODEL.md.
• Ops & maintenance: docs/DIAGNOSTICS.md and docs/CONTROL_WORKFLOWS.md.
• Orchestration pattern: docs/ACTIVITY_FLOW_PATTERN.md for “actor is the graph” guidance.
• Contributing: docs/CONTRIBUTING.md.

Testkit quick use

• testkit.ActorTemporalScenario runs actors against Temporal’s testsuite. Stub activities inline with WhenActivity(...); it infers names from typed signatures or accepts explicit names.
• Inspect merged activity options with ExpectActivityOptions helpers before execution.

Temporal runtime at a glance

• runtime registers workflows/activities from an actor description and wires Ask/Query/Spawn to Temporal signals, queries, and child workflows.
• runtime.NewWorkerSet reuses workers per queue and rotates histories automatically when WithSnapshot or GetContinueAsNewSuggested() triggers.
• Queue defaults match the actor kind (<kind>-workflow / <kind>-activity), and workers auto-disable the unused role so activity-only or workflow-only actors do not need extra flags. If you explicitly point both roles at the same queue and register both, one worker serves both.
• Activity calls get safe defaults: a StartToClose of 30s and ScheduleToClose of 2m are applied if you don’t set either. Override with actors.WithActivityStartToClose or actors.WithActivityScheduleToClose per-call or via WithActivityDefaults.

Repository guide

• actors/ – builder, typed helpers, and shared primitives.
• runtime/ – Temporal runner plus typed client utilities.
• testkit/ – deterministic harnesses (Temporal scenario and testing helpers).
• observability/ – pluggable tracing/metrics hooks; internal/ – supporting packages as we flesh out tooling.
• Samples now live in the sibling repo: https://github.com/tactors/samples.

Testing

Run the full suite (unit tests and Temporal testsuite scenarios) with:

GOCACHE=$(pwd)/.gocache go test ./...

No external Temporal server is required—the testsuite handles registration, fake time, and cleanup.

License

Released under the MIT License.