AWS Amazon Simple Workflow Service
Browse all Amazonaws APIs61
AI ReadinessAI-Aware (B-)61/100
Agent-ready OpenAPI document · curated by JenticDeveloper ToolsCi CdapiKey37 EndpointsREST
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For Agents
Coordinate long-running, multi-step workflows by registering domains and workflow types, polling for activity and decision tasks, and signalling running executions.
Use for: Register a new SWF domain for a workflow application, Start a workflow execution with a specific input payload, Poll for the next decision task in a workflow domain, Record an activity task heartbeat to extend its timeout
Not supported: Does not handle event-driven Lambda orchestration, message queueing, or visual state machines - use for long-running, decider-based workflow coordination only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Amazon Simple Workflow Service, keeping it validated and agent-ready. Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF) coordinates work across distributed application components. It models long-running business processes as workflow executions made up of activity tasks dispatched to workers and decision tasks dispatched to a decider, with full execution history and at-most-once task delivery. The 37 operations cover domain and type registration, polling for tasks, recording activity heartbeats, signalling and cancelling executions, and counting open or closed workflows for capacity planning.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Amazon Simple Workflow Service to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Amazon Simple Workflow Service, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Famazonaws.com%2Fswf" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Famazonaws.com%2Fswf" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Amazon Simple Workflow Service API.
Register and deprecate SWF domains, activity types, and workflow types
Start, signal, terminate, and request cancellation of workflow executions
Poll for decision tasks via PollForDecisionTask and respond with decisions
Poll for activity tasks via PollForActivityTask and report completion, failure, or cancellation
Record activity heartbeats to keep long-running tasks alive past their timeout
Inspect execution history with GetWorkflowExecutionHistory for replay and debugging
Count and list open or closed workflow executions for monitoring and capacity planning
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Amazon Simple Workflow Service API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Long-Running Order Fulfilment Workflows
Model an e-commerce order as an SWF workflow execution that spans payment authorisation, inventory reservation, shipping label generation, and customer notification - each implemented as an activity task picked up by a worker. SWF guarantees at-most-once task delivery and retains execution history for replay, making it well suited to processes that run for hours or days and need a precise audit trail.
Call StartWorkflowExecution in domain 'orders', workflowType OrderFulfilment v1, workflowId order-2026-06-09-001, taskList orders-decider, with input containing the order JSON.
Human-in-the-Loop Approval Pipelines
Run approval workflows that pause until a human signals a decision. The decider issues a ScheduleActivityTask for the human reviewer's queue; when the reviewer responds, an external system calls SignalWorkflowExecution to deliver the decision. SWF holds execution state for up to a year, so workflows can wait days for review without consuming compute.
Call SignalWorkflowExecution with domain 'approvals', workflowId loan-app-2026-06-09-77, signalName ReviewerDecision, and input '{"decision":"approved","reviewer":"jane.doe"}'.
Workflow Capacity and Health Monitoring
Operate SWF at scale by polling CountOpenWorkflowExecutions and CountClosedWorkflowExecutions per domain and workflow type. Combine with ListOpenWorkflowExecutions to find stuck runs and GetWorkflowExecutionHistory to drill into the event log when an execution stalls. This is the standard observability pattern for SWF before resorting to custom CloudWatch metrics.
Call CountOpenWorkflowExecutions for domain 'orders' with executionFilter on workflowId prefix 'order-', and return the open count.
Agent-Orchestrated Workflow Control via Jentic
Let an AI agent kick off, signal, and cancel SWF executions through Jentic without holding AWS keys. The agent submits an intent like 'start a fulfilment workflow for order 1234'; Jentic loads StartWorkflowExecution, validates the input, and executes it. Subsequent agent actions (signal, cancel) flow through the same vaulted credentials, keeping the agent context free of secrets.
Through Jentic, search for 'start an aws swf workflow execution', load StartWorkflowExecution, and execute with domain, workflowId, workflowType, and input.
Key Endpoints
37 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for amazon simple workflow service, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.StartWorkflowExecution
Start a workflow execution
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.PollForDecisionTask
Poll for the next decision task
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.PollForActivityTask
Poll for the next activity task
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.SignalWorkflowExecution
Signal a running workflow
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.GetWorkflowExecutionHistory
Read full execution history
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.RecordActivityTaskHeartbeat
Heartbeat a long-running activity
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.StartWorkflowExecution
Start a workflow execution
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.PollForDecisionTask
Poll for the next decision task
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.PollForActivityTask
Poll for the next activity task
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.SignalWorkflowExecution
Signal a running workflow
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.GetWorkflowExecutionHistory
Read full execution history
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=SimpleWorkflowService.RecordActivityTaskHeartbeat
Heartbeat a long-running activity
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
A
Amazon Simple Workflow Service
- AI-Aware (B-)61/100
99
Foundational Compliance63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility37
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability50
Security100
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
99
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A+Signals: 4
96%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: B-Signals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
50%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
37
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
49%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
100%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
0%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
50
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: C-Signals: 1
50%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
100
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring Amazon Simple Workflow Service by hand means computing SigV4 signatures against the us-east-1 swf endpoint, routing calls through the X-Amz-Target action header, and managing long-poll timeouts yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import Simple Workflow Service from the API Directory, store the access keys once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
SWF routes its actions through one endpoint by X-Amz-Target rather than resource ids in the path, so scope the agent to the operations it needs, such as StartWorkflowExecution and GetWorkflowExecutionHistory. You choose the operations it may call, so a cancel or terminate action is not included unless you add it.
Credential isolation
Your AWS access keys are stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and used to sign each SWF request with SigV4 at execution time. They never enter the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'start an SWF workflow execution' or 'poll for a decision task', and Jentic returns the matching Simple Workflow Service operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Amazon Simple Workflow Service API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Amazon Simple Workflow Service?
AWS does not publish an OpenAPI specification for Amazon Simple Workflow Service; it ships Smithy models and language-specific SDKs instead. Jentic generates and maintains this OpenAPI spec so that AI agents and developers can call Amazon Simple Workflow Service via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.
What authentication does Amazon Simple Workflow Service use?
SWF uses AWS SigV4 in the Authorization header with X-Amz-Target identifying the action (e.g. SimpleWorkflowService.StartWorkflowExecution). Through Jentic, your AWS access keys are stored encrypted in the vault and Jentic computes the SigV4 signature for each request.
Can I orchestrate human-in-the-loop steps with SWF?
Yes. Pause an execution by scheduling a long-timeout activity for a human-task queue, or have the decider stop scheduling new tasks until an external SignalWorkflowExecution call delivers the human decision. SWF retains execution state for up to a year.
What are the rate limits for Amazon SWF?
Default per-account limits include 100 starts per second per workflow type, 200 polls per second per task list, and a 1MB execution input/output size cap. Heartbeats and decisions have separate per-task-list quotas. Most limits are increasable via AWS Support.
How do I start an SWF workflow execution through Jentic?
Search Jentic with 'start an aws swf workflow execution', load the StartWorkflowExecution schema, and execute with domain, workflowId, workflowType (name + version), taskList, and an input string. Jentic returns the runId of the new execution.
Should I use SWF or AWS Step Functions for new workflows?
For new projects AWS recommends Step Functions, which offers a managed state machine and visual editor. Use SWF when you have an existing decider/activity-worker codebase, need finer control over task dispatch, or rely on its long execution retention.
Can I cancel a running workflow execution?
Yes. RequestCancelWorkflowExecution sends a cancellation request that the decider can act on; TerminateWorkflowExecution forces an immediate termination without giving the decider a chance to clean up.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Amazon Simple Workflow Service API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, you decide which SWF operations your agent may call, and your own rules are what grant or withhold access. SWF routes every action through a single endpoint by the X-Amz-Target header rather than by resource paths, so you scope the agent to just the operations it needs, such as StartWorkflowExecution, SignalWorkflowExecution, and GetWorkflowExecutionHistory. Destructive actions like RequestCancelWorkflowExecution or TerminateWorkflowExecution stay out of reach unless you explicitly add them.
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