Background Threads

runDetached() spawns a supervised worker_thread that lives for the lifetime of the parent Node process. This is genuinely useful for:

• Telegram/Slack/Discord bots that use long-polling
• Background pollers that watch for changes in external systems
• Data sync workers that periodically pull from APIs

How it works

A crash in the worker (bot logic throwing, a bad message loop) doesn't take down the HTTP server's event loop, and vice versa. Automatic exponential- backoff restart is built in.

import { runDetached } from '@nodalite/workers';

runDetached('./bot-worker.js', {
  name: 'telegram-bot',
  workerData: { token: process.env.BOT_TOKEN },
  onCrash: (err) => console.error(`Worker crashed:`, err),
});

The worker shares the same container/deployment unit — one process to deploy, monitor, and restart, not two.

The honest limit

A worker_thread only exists between the moment its parent Node process starts and the moment it exits. On AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, or any FaaS platform, there is no such persistent parent process — the runtime freezes or destroys your execution environment between invocations.

There is no version of runDetached() that works on serverless, because the premise — a process that outlives a single request, indefinitely — is exactly what serverless does not provide.

Serverless alternatives

If you need background work on a FaaS platform:

1. Switch to webhooks (preferred)

Telegram, Slack, Discord, GitHub, Stripe, etc. all support "call my URL when something happens" instead of polling. A webhook is just another route on your existing serverless API.

app.post('/webhooks/telegram', async (c) => {
  const update = await c.req.json();
  await handleUpdate(update);
  return c.noContent();
});

2. Run a small always-on service

If long-polling is unavoidable, run that specific piece as a minimal always-on service — a single container on Fly.io, Railway, ECS Fargate, or a $5 VPS — separate from your serverless API. runDetached() is exactly the right tool for that container.

3. Use scheduled tasks

If the work is periodic, not continuous, use toServerlessTask() from @nodalite/scheduler behind your cloud's native cron:

• AWS: EventBridge Scheduler → Lambda
• Cloudflare: Cron Triggers → Worker
• Google Cloud: Cloud Scheduler → Cloud Function