Stateless vs stateful execution

When to use this

You need to choose between independent request-style calls (stateless) and object lifetimes, callbacks, and events (stateful) — especially for edge clients and load-balanced services.

Prerequisites

• Public interface vs business logic
• GraftConfig reference

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Stateless execution

Characteristics:

• Each call is independent
• No server-side object retained between calls
• Maps to static methods and simple DTOs
• Scales horizontally without session stickiness

Interface pattern:

public static class OrderQueries
{
    public static OrderDto GetOrder(string orderId) => /* ... */;
}

GraftConfig:

GraftConfig.stateless = true;

GraftConfig.stateless = true;

Best for: edge clients (tutorial #1), MCP tools, read-heavy APIs.

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Stateful execution

Characteristics:

• Object instances live on the receiver
• Properties and methods on returned objects may trigger additional round-trips
• Callbacks, events, and delegates work over full-duplex Hypertube sessions
• Load balancers may need session stickiness

Interface pattern:

public class ShoppingCart
{
    public void AddItem(string sku) => /* ... */;
    public decimal GetTotal() => /* ... */;
}

const cart = new ShoppingCart();
await cart.addItem("SKU-1");
const total = await cart.getTotal();

GraftConfig: default stateless = false.

Best for: rich domain models, interactive workflows, service-to-service with long-lived objects (tutorial #3).

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Alpha note: DTOs and statefulness

In Alpha, complex object parameters/returns can make calls effectively stateful (session stickiness required). Beta will improve stateless DTO passing. See Alpha limitations.

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Comparison

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Verify it works

• Stateless: parallel calls from many clients without shared state bugs
• Stateful: same object instance behaves consistently across method calls on one session

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See also

• Scaling, load balancers, and proxies
• Edge client authentication
• Glossary supplement

Practiced in Quick Start tutorials #1 and #3