Choosing Your Deployment Model

chant covers the synthesis step — TypeScript in, validated artifacts out — and offers two optional layers beyond that. Knowing which layer fits your situation avoids unnecessary setup.

If you never use the operational layers, chant is a pure synthesis compiler — no executor, no state file, nothing to run. The orchestration layer is Temporal-native when you want durability and zero-dependency when you don’t: the local executor runs Ops in-process, and only gated or destructive applies need a Temporal cluster.

Synthesis Only

chant build produces spec-native artifacts (CloudFormation, GitLab CI, Kubernetes manifests, etc.) and stops. Deployment happens however it always has: a CI pipeline, ArgoCD, Terraform, a manual kubectl apply. Nothing else to install.

Use this when:

You already have a deployment pipeline you trust
You want to adopt typed, linted IaC without changing operational tooling
Your deployments are short-running or trivially retried from scratch

How to get started: Quick Start — the entire guide is synthesis-only.

# That's the complete picture for synthesis-only users
chant build
kubectl apply -f dist/infra.yaml   # or whatever your tooling does next

Ops — Durable Deployment Workflows

Ops are named, phased deployment workflows declared in *.op.ts files. chant build compiles each Op into a Temporal worker. chant run <name> starts the worker and submits the workflow to Temporal.

import { Op, phase, kubectlApply, shell } from "@intentius/chant-lexicon-temporal";

export default Op({
  name: "api-deploy",
  phases: [
    phase("Infra", [kubectlApply("dist/infra.yaml", { profile: "longInfra" })]),
    phase("App",   [kubectlApply("dist/k8s.yaml")]),
    phase("Smoke", [shell("kubectl rollout status deployment/api")]),
  ],
  onFailure: [
    phase("Rollback", [shell("kubectl delete -f dist/infra.yaml --ignore-not-found")]),
  ],
});

chant run api-deploy

You get: live phase progress in the Temporal UI, automatic retry on activity failure, onFailure phases run if the workflow terminates with an error, and gate steps that pause the workflow until a human or external system sends a signal.

Use this when:

Deployments take more than a few minutes
You want to see current phase and history without grepping logs
Some steps need to pause for human approval or an external event (DNS delegation, change-window approval)
You want automatic rollback on failure without scripting it yourself

How to get started: Quick Start for synthesis, then the Ops guide for Op authoring and chant run. Requires a Temporal server or Temporal Cloud (free tier available).

Raw Temporal + chant

You write your own Temporal workflow TypeScript — signals, queries, updates, parallel activities — and use chant-synthesized YAML as the input those activities operate on. This is the approach shown in the Temporal Workflow-Driven Deploy tutorial.

// Your own Temporal workflow
export async function deployWorkflow(params: DeployParams): Promise<void> {
  await applySharedInfra(params);           // activity calls kubectl apply on chant-built YAML
  await Promise.all([
    applyRegionalInfra(params, 'east'),     // parallel activities with heartbeat
    applyRegionalInfra(params, 'central'),
    applyRegionalInfra(params, 'west'),
  ]);
  setHandler(dnsSignal, () => { dnsReady = true; });
  await condition(() => dnsReady, '48h');   // gate step — signal or auto-detect
  // ...
}

Use this when:

You’re already running Temporal and have existing workers or workflow patterns
You need signal/query/update patterns, search attributes, or schedule triggers that Op phases don’t expose
You want full control over retry policies, heartbeat intervals, and workflow determinism

How to get started: Temporal Workflow-Driven Deploy tutorial.

Decision Table

Situation	Model
I have ArgoCD / Terraform / an existing deploy pipeline	Synthesis only
My deployment script is more than 50 lines and fails unpredictably	Ops
I need a human approval gate mid-deploy	Ops
I need parallel regional deploys with independent retry	Ops or raw Temporal
I’m already a Temporal shop with existing workers	Raw Temporal
I need custom Temporal search attributes or schedules	Raw Temporal
I need workflow-level queries during a running deploy	Raw Temporal (or Op + MCP `op-status`)