I think that the request pipeline is interesting enough to warrant a little discussion. Graphcool is running its users' code on their behalf right in the hot code path of their mutation pipeline. This means they're able to run untrusted code in an isolated and low-latency manner.

You may have seen something similar before in Auth0 Rules [1]. That the two share similarities is no coincidence! Auth0 Rules and Graphcool's 'inline functions' use the same Webtask technology behind the scenes.

At Auth0, we're working on packaging up this technology to provide an Extensibility as a Service offering called Auth0 Extend [2]. Auth0 Extend builds on the familiar webhook model but removes the friction webhooks impose on user; no more standing up and managing servers just to handle webhook invocations. Auth0 Extend makes it trivial to transform a platform's webhook integration into an in-platform custom code editing experience.

Look for more details Auth0 Extend in the coming days as we make our public launch. Also look for other exciting imminent product launches from our integration partners.

Congratulations on a beautiful and functional product launch Graphcool!

1: https://auth0.com/docs/rules

2: https://auth0.com/extend

Hi there! If you're interested in synchronous mutation callbacks (https://docs.scaphold.io/custom-logic/) and have multi-region deployment (https://docs.scaphold.io/app-management/multi-region/), you should check out Scaphold.io (https://scaphold.io)! We were in the most recent YC batch and have more features for schema management like enums and interfaces as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on Intercom or Slack.

Hi Vincent - nice to see you here :-)

You too! Congrats on the launch!

Thanks man - looking forward to finally meet you in Berlin! When are you guys flying out?

Thanks a lot - it's super inspiring to hear about all the cool projects being implemented on Graphcool!

To us it is very important that the features we implement are stable and ready for real production apps. That's why we sometime keep new features in beta for a long period while we work out all the kinks :-)

I'm looking forward to see how the new Functions will help you reduce the complexity of your app! btw - I added a link in another comment here to a post about how we see serverless functions and GraphQL play together. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

One of the things that I think is missing from your documentation is better explanation of what happens if things fail. For example, if one of the async functions fails, do you re-run it? The async functions can have externally-visible invoking webservices and such - if something hiccups, do you run the function again? Can I come in and get a list of all the times it would have been run and re-invoke them myself later if need be?