WorkflowForge 2.0: 540x Faster, New Extensions, and a Documentation Site

The Question Everyone Asked

“Your internal benchmarks look great, but how does WorkflowForge actually compare to other popular alternatives?”

Fair question. Internal metrics only tell half the story. So for version 2.0, I ran head-to-head benchmarks against the two most popular workflow frameworks in .NET—with BenchmarkDotNet, 50 iterations per scenario, and full transparency on methodology.

The short answer: WorkflowForge operates in microseconds while the alternatives work in milliseconds. The gap widens as complexity increases.

Let me show you the numbers.

Full codebase and benchmarks: GitHub Repository

Documentation: animatlabs.com/workflow-forge

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The Benchmarks

Test environment: Windows 11 (25H2), .NET 8.0.23, Intel i7-1185G7, BenchmarkDotNet v0.15.8

Execution Time

Scenario	WorkflowForge	Workflow Core	Elsa	Advantage
Sequential (10 ops)	247μs	6,531μs	17,617μs	26-71x
Data Passing (10 ops)	262μs	6,737μs	18,222μs	26-70x
Conditional (10 ops)	266μs	8,543μs	21,333μs	32-80x
Loop (50 items)	497μs	35,421μs	64,171μs	71-129x
Concurrent (8 workers)	356μs	38,833μs	94,018μs	109-264x
Error Handling	111μs	1,228μs	7,150μs	11-64x
Creation Overhead	13μs	814μs	2,107μs	63-162x
State Machine (25 transitions)	68μs	20,624μs	36,695μs	303-540x
Parallel (16 ops)	55μs	2,437μs	20,891μs	44-380x

The pattern is clear: simple workflows show 26-71x improvement, but state machines hit 540x faster. Complexity amplifies the gap.

Memory Allocation

Scenario	WorkflowForge	Workflow Core	Elsa	Advantage
Sequential (10 ops)	16.31KB	430KB	2,984KB	26-183x
State Machine (25)	20.92KB	1,106KB	5,949KB	53-284x
Concurrent (8 workers)	121KB	3,232KB	19,139KB	27-158x
Parallel (16 ops)	8.1KB	122KB	4,647KB	15-573x
Minimal Baseline	3.49KB	37KB	1,032KB	11-296x

WorkflowForge stays in kilobytes. The competition allocates megabytes. Baseline overhead is just 3.49 KB.

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What’s New in 2.0

Beyond benchmarks, version 2.0 brings real improvements based on community feedback.

13 Packages (Up from 6)

Package	What It Does
WorkflowForge	Zero-dependency core
WorkflowForge.Testing	Unit testing with FakeWorkflowFoundry
WorkflowForge.Extensions.DependencyInjection	ASP.NET Core integration
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Validation	DataAnnotations validation
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Audit	Compliance trails
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Logging.Serilog	Structured logging
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Resilience.Polly	Circuit breakers, retries
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Persistence.Recovery	Resume interrupted workflows
WorkflowForge.Extensions.Observability.OpenTelemetry	Distributed tracing

Plus 4 more for resilience, persistence, and health checks.

Lifecycle Hooks

The most requested feature: setup and teardown without middleware.

public class AuditedOperation : WorkflowOperationBase
{
    protected override async Task OnBeforeExecuteAsync(
        object? inputData, IWorkflowFoundry foundry, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        foundry.SetProperty("StartTime", DateTime.UtcNow);
    }

    protected override async Task<object?> ForgeAsyncCore(
        object? inputData, IWorkflowFoundry foundry, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        return await ProcessAsync(inputData, ct);
    }

    protected override async Task OnAfterExecuteAsync(
        object? inputData, object? outputData, IWorkflowFoundry foundry, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        var duration = DateTime.UtcNow - foundry.GetProperty<DateTime>("StartTime");
        foundry.Logger.LogInformation("Completed in {Duration}ms", duration.TotalMilliseconds);
    }
}

Cleaner APIs

Build workflows faster with bulk operations:

var workflow = WorkflowForge.CreateWorkflow("BatchProcess")
    .AddOperations(
        new ValidateOperation(),
        new TransformOperation(),
        new PersistOperation()
    )
    .Build();

// Or parallel execution
var workflow = WorkflowForge.CreateWorkflow("ParallelFetch")
    .AddOperation(new InitOperation())
    .AddParallelOperations(
        new FetchFromApiA(),
        new FetchFromApiB(),
        new FetchFromApiC()
    )
    .AddOperation(new AggregateResults())
    .Build();

First-Class Testing

The new WorkflowForge.Testing package makes unit testing trivial:

[Fact]
public async Task Operation_ProcessesData_Successfully()
{
    var foundry = new FakeWorkflowFoundry();
    var operation = new MyOperation();
    
    var result = await operation.ForgeAsync(null, foundry, CancellationToken.None);
    
    Assert.True(foundry.ExecutedOperations.Contains("MyOperation"));
}

Zero Dependency Conflicts

Extensions now internalize third-party dependencies via ILRepack. Microsoft/System packages stay external. Result: no version conflicts with your existing projects.

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Breaking Changes

Upgrading from 1.x? Here’s what changed:

Event interfaces split (Single Responsibility Principle):

• IWorkflowEvents → IWorkflowLifecycleEvents, IOperationLifecycleEvents, ICompensationLifecycleEvents

Base class method renamed (to support lifecycle hooks):

// 1.x
public override async Task<object?> ForgeAsync(...)

// 2.0
protected override async Task<object?> ForgeAsyncCore(...)

ISystemTimeProvider now uses DI instead of static instance.

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Get Started

dotnet add package WorkflowForge
dotnet add package WorkflowForge.Testing  # Optional

Hello World

using WorkflowForge;

var workflow = WorkflowForge.CreateWorkflow("HelloWorld")
    .AddOperation("Greet", async (foundry, ct) => {
        foundry.Logger.LogInformation("Hello from WorkflowForge 2.0!");
    })
    .Build();

using var smith = WorkflowForge.CreateSmith();
await smith.ForgeAsync(workflow);

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Resources

What	Where
Documentation	animatlabs.com/workflow-forge
GitHub	github.com/animatlabs/workflow-forge
NuGet	nuget.org/packages/WorkflowForge
Benchmarks	Full Methodology
Samples	33 Examples

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The Bottom Line

WorkflowForge 2.0 isn’t just about claiming performance—it’s about proving it. The benchmarks are reproducible, the methodology is documented, and the code is open source.

If workflow performance matters for your .NET application—high-throughput processing, real-time orchestration, microservice coordination—run your own benchmarks. The numbers speak for themselves.

Questions? → Open an Issue

Happy forging.