Pinned

Durable Objects for Python.

A PinnedAPI instance for a given id will exist exactly once in your fleet. It acts as a singleton webserver.

PinnedAPI

from pinned import PinnedAPI, route


class MyAPI(PinnedAPI):
    async def lifespan(self):
        # setup
        yield
        # teardown

    @route.get("/hello")
    async def hello(self):
        return {"hello": self.id}

• Handlers must be async def.
• Ids are client-generated; the first request activates.
• @route.get/post/websocket see the path remainder after the id.
• self.create_task(coro) runs background work bound to the instance: it blocks idle eviction while running, teardown waits for it, abort() cancels it.

PinnedHost

from pinned import PinnedHost, PinnedWorker

app = FastAPI()
worker = PinnedWorker(
    pinboard_url="https://pinboard.internal",
    advertise_url="http://10.0.3.7:8000",  # must uniquely address THIS process
    token="the deployment token",
)
app.include_router(worker)
app.include_router(PinnedHost(MyAPI, worker=worker, namespace="/myapi"))

• PinnedHost is an APIRouter carrying /{id} that dispatches to the instance.
• PinnedWorker holds the pinboard registration; several hosts share one.
• A host without a worker runs in local mode: an in-memory directory, same external API — app.include_router(PinnedHost(MyAPI), prefix="/myapi").

Pinboard

A reverse proxy that routes each request to the backend holding the instance, placing instances on registered backends as needed. Requires Redis and a deployment token shared with the backends.

Protocol

All registry calls carry Authorization: Bearer <deployment token>.

• POST /registry/register at boot — { clientId, secret, namespaces, advertiseUrl, headroom, draining, challenge, challengeValue }. Before accepting, pinboard calls GET <advertiseUrl>/_pinned/challenge?challenge=<challenge> (authenticated with x-pinned-proxy-secret) and requires the matching { value }. Response: { sessionId, expiresInMs }.
• POST /registry/heartbeat every 3s — { sessionId, headroom, draining, drainDeadline?, challenge?, challengeValue? }; this worker always sends a fresh challenge pair per heartbeat, re-proving the advertise URL via the same challenge callback (the pair is optional on the wire, both fields or neither — pairless legacy workers get reregister: true in the ack while unverified). Response: ack { expiresInMs, messages? } — messages carries queued drain/wind_down control messages; or a 409 NACK: reregister (unknown session — abort local instances, register fresh) or superseded.
• POST /registry/release — { clientId, namespace, id } frees a placement when an instance closes.
• Operator: POST /registry/push queues a drain/wind_down for a worker (delivered on its next heartbeat ack); GET /registry/workers and GET /registry/overview introspect; GET /healthz is unauthenticated.
• clientId and secret are minted once at process start. sessionId is the per-registration lease token: placements belong to the session, and the backend aborts all local instances before serving under a new one.
• Data-plane requests go over plain HTTP to <advertiseUrl>/<id><rest>. The proxy sets x-pinned-proxy-secret to the worker's secret; the backend rejects a mismatch with 403.
• Placement is per (namespace, id): first claim wins (Redis SET NX) among live, undrained backends, biased toward headroom. Redis keys and body shapes are documented in pinboard's source (packages/pinned/pinboard).

Lifecycle

• Activation on first request; deactivation by idle sweep. In-flight requests and open streams block eviction.
• A host holds at most max_instances ids at once (default 10 000); activations beyond the cap answer 503 + Retry-After while existing instances keep serving.
• self.abort() force-ends an instance: cancels in-flight work and tears down.
• Streams are pull-based: the response generator advances only as the client reads — a slow client backpressures its own stream and nothing else, with no per-connection buffer.
• Draining workers answer new activations with 503 + Retry-After while existing requests keep serving; freed ids activate on the new deployment.
• While an instance's close and /registry/release are in flight, requests for that id answer 503 + Retry-After so the proxy re-resolves the placement instead of re-activating locally.

Instance memory is ephemeral. Idle eviction, deploys, lease loss, and crashes all discard it; a re-activation starts from lifespan with nothing. Anything that must survive belongs in the app's own store, written before the response that claims it.

Leases and fencing

• Each acked heartbeat anchors the lease at send time: self.lease.expires_at = send time + expiresInMs (10s by default, pinboard-supplied) — the moment pinboard may re-place this worker's ids, matching the worker record's Redis TTL.
• When expires_at - buffer passes without an ack, the worker quits: aborts every local instance and stops registering before the ids can move; the host app keeps running. The buffer (default 5s) is the worker's local safety margin; self.lease.configure(...) changes it and the handlers.
• A frozen process (VM pause, long GC) that wakes after its lease lapsed fails its next heartbeat (unknown session) and aborts everything before serving again.
• Registration failures retry with exponential backoff (capped at 30s); only a superseded NACK — another session took over this worker — stops the loop for good. host.ready is False while the worker is unregistered or past its lease; wire it to the app's readiness probe (pinned_registered is the matching gauge).
• Guarantee: at most one live instance per id outside a lease-bounded failure window.

Observability

Lifecycle events (activation, eviction/abort, drain, lease health, registration) log on the stdlib pinned.* logger hierarchy with instance/namespace fields; configure it like any library logger. When prometheus_client is importable, pinned.metrics registers pinned_* counters, gauges, and a per-namespace request duration histogram on the default registry — a host app exposing /metrics picks them up automatically. Without the package they are no-ops. No Sentry or OpenTelemetry wiring; that stays in the host app.