Trigger a Workflow and Watch for Completion

These are instructions for an AI agent to trigger a Hatchet workflow and poll until it completes. Follow each step in order.

Prerequisites

A Hatchet worker must be running (hatchet worker dev -p HATCHET_PROFILE). If no worker is running, the task will stay QUEUED forever.
You must know the workflow name and have the input JSON ready.
These commands need a profile. If the worker runs in embedded mode for local development, trigger from code in the worker process instead; see local-dev-embedded.md.

Step 1: Write Input to a Temp File

Write the input JSON to a uniquely-named temp file to avoid collisions with other sessions:

HATCHET_INPUT_FILE="/tmp/hatchet-input-$(date +%s)-$$.json"
cat > "$HATCHET_INPUT_FILE" << 'ENDJSON'
INPUT_JSON
ENDJSON

Replace INPUT_JSON with the actual JSON payload for the workflow.

Step 2: Trigger the Workflow

RUN_ID=$(hatchet trigger manual -w WORKFLOW_NAME -j "$HATCHET_INPUT_FILE" -p HATCHET_PROFILE -o json | jq -r '.runId')

The -o json flag makes the command output {"runId": "...", "workflow": "..."} to stdout. The command above captures the run ID directly into $RUN_ID for the next steps.

Step 3: Poll for Completion

Run the following command every 5 seconds until the run reaches a terminal state:

hatchet runs get <RUN_ID> -o json -p HATCHET_PROFILE

Parse the JSON response and check the status:

Look at .run.status for the overall run status and .tasks[].status for individual task statuses.
Terminal statuses are: COMPLETED, FAILED, CANCELLED.
Non-terminal statuses are: QUEUED, RUNNING. Keep polling if you see these.

Step 4: Handle Failure

If the run status is FAILED, gather diagnostic information:

Fetch logs

hatchet runs logs <RUN_ID> -p HATCHET_PROFILE

This prints application-level log output (e.g. print statements, logger calls from your task code). Look for error messages, stack traces, or unexpected output.

Fetch events

hatchet runs events <RUN_ID> -o json -p HATCHET_PROFILE

This returns the lifecycle event log showing how the task was dispatched, started, and failed. Look at the eventType and message fields to understand the failure sequence.

Step 5: Clean Up

rm -f "$HATCHET_INPUT_FILE"

Common Issues

Task stays QUEUED: The worker is not running, or the workflow/task name does not match what the worker registered. Start or restart the worker.
Task FAILED immediately: Check the logs for a stack trace. The task code likely threw an exception.
Task CANCELLED: Something cancelled the run externally. Check events to see the cancellation source.

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