Scheduling a Future Agent Invocation (TypeScript)

Overview

A scheduled invocation enqueues a method call on the target agent to be executed at a specific future time. The call returns immediately; the target agent processes it when the scheduled time arrives.

Usage

Every method on a definition RPC client has a .schedule() variant that takes a Datetime as the first argument, followed by the method’s input record (omit the input for methods declared with input: {}). It returns a CancellationToken; ignore the token when cancellation is not needed.

import { Counter } from './counter-agent.js';
 
const counter = Counter.client.get({ name: 'my-counter' });
 
// Schedule increment to run 60 seconds from now.
const nowSecs = BigInt(Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000));
counter.increment.schedule({ seconds: nowSecs + 60n, nanoseconds: 0 });
 
// Schedule with arguments.
const reporter = ReportAgent.client.get({ name: 'daily' });
reporter.generateReport.schedule(
    { seconds: BigInt(tomorrowMidnight), nanoseconds: 0 },
    { kind: 'summary' },
);

Datetime Type

The Datetime argument represents a point in time as seconds + nanoseconds since the Unix epoch. It is a plain object; construct it inline:

const at = {
    seconds: BigInt(1700000000),  // Unix timestamp as a BigInt
    nanoseconds: 0,               // Sub-second precision
};

Note: seconds is a BigInt in the TypeScript binding. If you want the exact type, import it as import type { Datetime } from 'golem:agent/host@2.0.0'.

Cancellation

Keep the CancellationToken returned by .schedule(at, input) and call .cancel() any time before the scheduled time to cancel the invocation:

const token = counter.increment.schedule({ seconds: nowSecs + 60n, nanoseconds: 0 });
// …later, if the run is no longer wanted:
token.cancel();

(To cancel an in-flight — not scheduled — RPC call, pass { signal } as the trailing option to the normal awaited call and abort the AbortSignal, for example method(input, { signal }). You can also gate a method on agent state, or cancel from the CLI with a known idempotency key via golem agent cancel-invocation — see golem-cancel-queued-invocation.)

Use Cases

• Periodic tasks: Schedule the next run at the end of each invocation
• Delayed processing: Process an order after a cooling-off period
• Reminders and notifications: Send a reminder at a specific time
• Retry with backoff: Schedule a retry after a delay on failure