# Article: Implementing Durable Workflows on Postgres Without an External Orchestrator

DevFeed: [Article: Implementing Durable Workflows on Postgres Without an External Orchestrator](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/article-implementing-durable-workflows-on-postgres-without-an-external-orchestrator-17392.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.infoq.com/articles/durable-workflows-postgres/>)

Author: Raman Varma

Published: 2026-09-14T11:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [InfoQ](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/infoq.md>)

Topics: [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [SQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sql.md>), [Provisioning](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/provisioning.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>), [CI/CD](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cicd.md>), [Kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kubernetes.md>), [AWS Step Functions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/aws-step-functions.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-ml-data-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-ml-data-engineering.md>), [architecture-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture-design.md>), [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [aws-step-functions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aws-step-functions.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [durable-workflows-postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/durable-workflows-postgres.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure.md>), [kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kubernetes.md>), [ml-data-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ml-data-engineering.md>), [orchestration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/orchestration.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [queue](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/queue.md>), [relational-databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/relational-databases.md>), [sql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sql.md>), [workflows](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/workflows.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how to implement durable workflows on Postgres without an external orchestrator. It describes using row-level locking as a concurrent work queue, primary-key checkpoints for idempotency, and leases with a sweeper for crash recovery. Workflow state, sleeps, and human approvals can persist in the database and survive process restarts.

## Source excerpt

Postgres can serve as the durable state store and coordination layer for workflows, eliminating the need for an external orchestrator. SKIP LOCKED enables concurrent work processing, primary-key checkpoints enforce idempotency, and leases support crash recovery. Workflow sleeps and human approvals can also be persisted as database state and survive restarts. By Raman Varma