context.sleep

context.sleep() pauses workflow execution for a specified duration. When a workflow is paused, the current request completes and a new one is automatically scheduled to resume after the delay. This ensures no compute resources are consumed during the sleep period.

Always await a sleep step to properly pause execution.

Arguments

stepName

string

A unique identifier for the step.

duration

number|string

The duration to pause workflow execution.

Human-readable string format:

Input	Duration
`"10s"`	10 seconds
`"1m"`	1 minute
`"30m"`	30 minutes
`"2h"`	2 hours
`"1d"`	1 day
`"1w"`	1 week
`"1mo"`	1 month
`"1y"`	1 year

Numeric format (seconds):

Input	Duration
`60`	60 seconds (1 minute)
`3600`	3600 seconds (1 hour)
`86400`	86400 seconds (1 day)

Usage

import { serve } from "@upstash/workflow/nextjs";
import { signIn, sendEmail } from "@/utils/onboarding-utils";

export const { POST } = serve<User>(async (context) => {
  const userData = context.requestPayload;

  const user = await context.run("sign-in", async () => {
    const signedInUser = await signIn(userData);
    return signedInUser;
  });

  // 👇 Wait for one day (in seconds)
  await context.sleep("wait-until-welcome-email", "1d");

  await context.run("send-welcome-email", async () => {
    return sendEmail(user.name, user.email);
  });
});

from fastapi import FastAPI
from upstash_workflow.fastapi import Serve
from upstash_workflow import AsyncWorkflowContext
from onboarding_utils import sign_in, send_email

app = FastAPI()
serve = Serve(app)


@serve.post("/api/onboarding")
async def onboarding(context: AsyncWorkflowContext[User]) -> None:
    user_data = context.request_payload

    async def _sign_in():
        return await sign_in(user_data)

    user = await context.run("sign-in", _sign_in)

    # 👇 Wait for one day (in seconds)
    await context.sleep("wait-until-welcome-email", "1d")

    async def _send_email():
        return await send_email(user.name, user.email)

    await context.run("send-welcome-email", _send_email)

Getting Started

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Usage