Cold Starts

If your workflow doesn't process an event for roughly 5 minutes, Pipedream turns off the execution environment that runs your code. When your workflow receives another event, Pipedream creates a new execution environment and process your event. Initializing this environment takes a few seconds, which delays the execution of this first event. This is common on serverless platforms, and is typically referred to as a "cold start".

If your workflow needs to process data in a time-sensitive manner (for example, if you're issuing an HTTP response), you can implement the following workaround to keep your workflow "warm".

• Create a scheduled workflow that runs roughly every 5 minutes, making an HTTP request to your HTTP-triggered workflow on the /warm path (see example workflow).
• Then, in your original workflow, add a step at the top that ends the workflow early if it receives a request on this /warm path. You can set this path to be whatever you'd like — /warm is just an example. On normal requests, that step won't run and your workflow will proceed as normal (see example workflow).

We're tracking the ability to keep a workflow permanently warm here. Feel free to follow that issue to receive updates.

Still have questions?

Please reach out if this doc didn't answer your question. We're happy to help!