Inside Workflow DevKit: How framework integrations work

The Workflow Development Kit (WDK) at Ship AI, announced in December 2025, integrates with multiple frameworks to allow developers to build workflows using any framework and deploy them across various platforms. Initially supporting Next.js and Nitro, WDK now works with eight frameworks, including SvelteKit and Astro, with additional integrations in development. Despite differences in bundlers and routing systems, all framework integrations follow a two-phase pattern: a build-time phase that compiles workflow and step functions into executable handler files and a runtime phase that exposes these handlers as HTTP endpoints. WDK uses a SWC compiler plugin to transform code into different outputs, enabling automatic generation of client, step handler, and workflow handler code. The integration with frameworks such as SvelteKit utilizes Vite's plugin system and file-based routing, allowing seamless integration without manual configuration. For frameworks without a bundler, such as Express and Hono, WDK uses the Nitro server toolkit to provide similar capabilities. Overcoming challenges such as differing framework request objects, WDK injects converter functions to ensure compatibility. Since its launch, WDK has gained traction, with over 1,300 GitHub stars, demonstrating its effectiveness in enabling durable workflows across diverse frameworks, thus making workflow durability a standardized concept in the development ecosystem.