What is Dex?
Dex is Durable Execution: an abstraction over distributed systems for backend engineering.
Most systems already have durable storage — databases that persist data. Durable Execution persists data and actions together as an execution. When a process dies, a network blips, or a dependency is slow, the program resumes from where it left off instead of being reconstructed from queues, cron jobs, and custom recovery code.
The core idea
| Layer | What it persists |
|---|---|
| Durable storage | Data |
| Durable Execution | Data + Actions (as execution) |
A Dex Flow is ordinary application code structured as Steps, Attributes, Channels, timers, and RPCs. Dex keeps those control-flow decisions durable so you write business logic, not a second orchestration framework.
Abstractions as a set of capabilities
Durable Execution is not one feature. It is a set of distributed-system abstractions — durable variables, timers, waiting, channels, RPC, locking, retries, and more.
See the Capabilities Overview for a breakdown of each abstraction, with why it exists, how to use it, how Dex implements it, and what teams traditionally build by hand.
Next steps
- Quick Start — install
dexcli, write a Hello Flow, and watch it in Dex Web - Design Patterns — reusable Flow shapes
- Use Cases — product examples