iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Qian Li @qianli.dev · 26/09/2026

Be aware of Postgres SELECT DISTINCT.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 16/09/2026

We've got a witch! Well now you know our docs are still written by actual humans.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 11/09/2026

Hyperfocused Great Blue Heron. It caught a fish just after I took this photo.

A Great Blue Heron gazed into the water, its wings slightly spread.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 28/08/2026

Open source is fundamental to DBOS and is essential to innovation. Today, we published the DBOS Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge. It makes clear that the patent is defensive and will not be asserted against free and open-source software projects. 🔗 dbos.dev/opn-pledge

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 25/08/2026

I spend less time clicking around web UIs and more time in the terminal these days. CLI tools are often easier for agents to understand and use, and they're becoming easier for me too. I can type what I want, ask an agent to run it, or use them in CI/CD pipelines.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 24/07/2026

Happy Friday! Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY is useful, and it scales.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 24/07/2026

We had a great time chatting with Nik and Michael on the Postgres FM podcast! In this new episode, we discuss building durable workflows on Postgres, along with some of the interesting tricks and pitfalls we encountered while building DBOS.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 02/07/2026

Postgres is a superpower.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 28/06/2026

We reimplemented Temporal with Postgres.. Check out the Github repo: github.com/dbos-inc/dbo...

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 11/05/2026

We just published the demo video from our latest DBOS user group! Big thanks to Adrian from @llamaindex.bsky.social for walking through the DBOS integration with LlamaAgents, an open-source Python framework for building and deploying document-centric AI agents. 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=R14T...

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 09/05/2026

Agent-as-a-Service… is the future 🤔

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 30/04/2026

We wrote a blog post to answer the perennial question: "Does Postgres scale?" Curious to hear what people think. Feedback welcome: dbos.dev/blog/benchma...

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 13/03/2026

Added this cute cat sticker from @clickhouse.com to my laptop!

A sticker with a cat wearing a headset and playing a desktop

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 10/02/2026

OpenAI Agents SDK + @dbos.dev integration is now live! You can run OpenAI agents with durable execution backed directly by your database. DBOS embeds as a library, so it works anywhere, even inside a local coding agent. Check it out, and any feedback is welcome: openai.github.io/openai-agent...

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 31/12/2025

The keyword of 2025 for me is: community. This includes @dbos.dev, @southbaysystems.xyz, and several open-source projects. 🧵 Thanks to everyone who was part of my 2025. I'm proud of what we built, clearer about what matters, and excited about the year ahead.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 25/12/2025

Happy holidays! I got this cute card with birds on it and wanted to share it 🥳 I don’t know who painted this but it’s sooo adorable! #birds

A card with five cartoon blue jays. The leftmost one wears a Santa hat.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 08/12/2025

Saw a couple of leucistic Wild Turkeys 🦃 hanging around Crystal Springs Reservoir. My first time seeing ones like this. #birds

A leucistic Wild Turkey walking on the grass.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 03/12/2025

Good memories from #QConSF Conversations about system design tradeoffs, and someone told me they learned about SKIP LOCKED from my talk. That's why I love QCon: the technical exchange, not product pitches. I now have my second Postgres elephant plushie thanks to @yugabytedb.bsky.social

Left to right: an elephant plushie wearing "Fujitsu", a name tag from QCon, and another elephant plushie wearing "YugabyteDB"

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 21/11/2025

Happy Friday! This morning, I saw this Cooper's Hawk perched right outside my window (it was sooo close). It looked all fierce and determined. I went to grab my DSLR, and of course, it flew away immediately... #birds

A juvenile Cooper's Hawk perched on a branch.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 21/11/2025

Yesterday was our final @southbaysystems.xyz talk event of 2025 (what a year!). Huge thanks to @julianhyde.bsky.social and Yuanyuan for their awesome talks! A big shout-out to our amazing host, @startreedata.bsky.social, for the venue and food!

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 18/11/2025

Hmmm no thanks. How do I block random calendar spam invites that appear on my calendar?

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 14/11/2025

You know it's Friday when an engineer shows up proudly wearing a T-shirt that says "The South Butt".

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 13/11/2025

We're back on HN! This time with our Postgres-backed durable execution library for Java. It plugs into existing Spring apps with minimal changes and gives you durable workflows, queues, retries, and scheduling without extra infrastructure. Feedback very welcome! github.com/dbos-inc/dbo...

Show HN: DBOS Java - Postgres-backed durable workflows

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 10/11/2025

I added two new demos showing durable agent patterns (parallel vs sequential) with @pydantic.dev AI + @dbos.dev: - Deep Research: large fan-out parallel workflows - Twenty Questions: long sequential subagent chaining Both are long-running, so durable execution is necessary to survive crashes.

Workflow graph for the deep research agent, showing massive parallel processing (fan-out).

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 06/11/2025

p.s. We have quite a few LOTR fans here. One colleague joked, "DBOS might have saved Gondolin". Earlier this year, I finished both The Hobbit and LOTR books (and the movies, of course), so I'll allow it.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 02/11/2025

Always regret not bringing my good camera when I see cool birds 🥹 Today, I saw multiple Double-Crested Cormorants standing in the sun with their wings spread to dry their feather. They turned around periodically to evenly dry both sides. #bird

A Double-Crested Cormorant drying its wings

A pair of Double-Crested Cormorants drying their wings

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 01/11/2025

Decorated a little pumpkin diva 🎃

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 28/10/2025

I wrote a tutorial on integrating DBOS with Logfire. It's super easy to set up (kudos to the @pydantic.dev team!) -> just a few lines to configure the exporter and your Logfire write token. Once it's running, you'll get a unified view of your app with logs + traces in one place.

A screenshot of using Logfire + DBOS + Pydantic AI agent.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 28/10/2025

Very fancy South Bay Systems setup at Adobe Founders tower tonight 🚀 @southbaysystems.xyz

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 26/10/2025

I care more about helping developers build reliable systems than chasing vanity metrics such as GitHub stars. Still, seeing the DBOS Python repo reach 1K 🌟 makes me smile. Thanks for building durable workflows with @dbos.dev. Full speed ahead - Java release coming soon!

Screenshot of https://github.com/dbos-inc

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 17/10/2025

I know that urge to track every user and collect data, but we make sure DBOS doesn't collect any data from our open source libraries. This matters a ton when integrating with other open-source software. Lean software with few dependencies means fewer back doors for malware or security/privacy risks.

Conversation: "I left a comment on you P/R before I merged it asking for you to give an assertion that no telemetry is collected by DBOS when the CONDUCTOR_KEY is not set."

Qian: "Correct. If no CONDUCTOR_KEY is set then DBOS doesn't collect any data. Our marketing team wanted to add something but our engineers defended against that idea."

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 03/10/2025

Had a fun time at the South Bay Systems meetup last night. Thanks @yugabytedb.bsky.social for hosting! @codedrift.social gave a great talk on WebAssembly: what it is (and isn't), how it connects to WASI, and promising projects. He cuts through a lot of the hype vs. reality. Recording coming soon.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 03/10/2025

We’re back again… with the new Go release 😎

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 02/10/2025

Just released DBOS TypeScript v4.0! Following our Python release, we trimmed dependencies in TS too: down from 27 to 6, while still implementing durable workflows and queues in a single library. It works with both TS/JS and requires no extra orchestrator. Release notes: github.com/dbos-inc/dbo...

A screenshot of how DBOS only has 6 dependencies: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@dbos-inc/dbos-sdk

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 25/09/2025

Several people (thanks to @mitsuhiko.at and @sa.muelcolvin.com) noted early on that DBOS had too many dependencies. In the latest Python release, we trimmed it down to just 6 direct deps while still implementing durable workflows and queues in one library. It's lightweight (for real).

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 25/09/2025

Docker Hub is partially down www.dockerstatus.com Found it because our GitHub actions were failing to pull images.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 23/09/2025

I recorded my #p99conf talk yesterday, and my speaker swag box just arrived too! Super sweet and thoughtful gift. I already deployed stickers on my laptop :) Huge thanks to the organizers @scylladb.com @cynthiadunlop.bsky.social for a smooth recording. Can't wait for the conference!

Top: a swag box from P99Conf. Bottom: my laptop stickers.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 17/09/2025

Something you don't see every day: Postgres creator (and our CTO) Mike Stonebraker signed up for the DBOS user group next week. This time, Dosu will show how they use DBOS for document ingestion and agentic Q&A. Always inspiring to see what people are building! Come hang out with us (and Mike).

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 16/09/2025

We had our first job posting from a customer on our Discord! And yes, I immediately told them to cross-post in @eatonphil.bsky.social Software Internals channel too. Awesome to see teams hiring specifically to expand their DBOS use cases. Join our community here: discord.gg/kgJeE7S2rA

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 10/09/2025

(Based on a true story today) Me: I should go to bed early. Also me: Nope I can't sleep. I really want to understand why this code isn't behaving as expected. ... N hour(s) later: I figured it out, filed the bug, and now I can finally sleep with peace of mind.

Meme source: https://programmerhumor.io/debugging-memes/why-developers-dont-sleep/

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 09/09/2025

Check out our latest blog post! @jedberg.bsky.social shared his experience running queue services at Reddit, and reminded us why durable queues matter. "If the queue itself went down... we could just lose votes, or comments, or submissions." 🔗 www.dbos.dev/blog/durable...

A DBOS blog post is on the front page of Hacker News.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 01/09/2025

I often call Steller's Jay the “mohawk bird”. It certainly has very cool hairstyle and grumpy harsh calls. #bird

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 28/08/2025

I think you're right 😂

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 27/08/2025

Now we have "Star Wars" across our four languages: DBOS TypeScript, Python, Go, and Java. Help us settle the galaxy balance by dropping your stars here: github.com/dbos-inc

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 26/08/2025

DBOS now has its own subreddit! Come hang out, share ideas, ask questions, and help us shape the future of durable workflows and queues. Fun fact: our CEO @jedberg.bsky.social (aka jedberg) was the first employee at Reddit, and now he's our mod. Full circle moment. 🔗 www.reddit.com/r/dbos/

Screenshot of https://www.reddit.com/r/dbos/

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 25/08/2025

The highlight of every user group is hearing directly from our users. Join us to see how doohickey.ai uses @dbos.dev to automate AI-powered ERP integrations. Thursday, August 28 @ 11AM PT Zoom (no recording — so don’t miss it!) lu.ma/8rqv5o5z

A user promoting DBOS user group on Twitter

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 14/08/2025

I asked GPT-5 to "generate an image of you and me" in cartoon style. Here's what it came up with… well, it's been picturing me as a guy. It said: "I don’t actually know your gender unless you tell me — the image I generated just used a generic cartoon human because I didn’t have any reference."

GPT-5 generated a cartoon image with the prompt: "generate an image of you and me"

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 13/08/2025

FOMO is real, so I did drive up to SF for the SF Systems meetup last night. Totally worth it - fun talks and great conversations! Thanks @shadaj.me @chris.wensel.net and the team for organizing it.

Scott presenting "When Faulty Hardware Happens to Flawless Databases"

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 12/08/2025

The recommended time to leave our Sunnyvale office for a meetup in SF is insane 😂

Google map recommended to leave around 3:40PM for a meetup in SF.

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Qian Li @qianli.dev · 12/08/2025

LLM streaming is already common, but I like this newly released durable streams feature. In DBOS, streams are append-only, durable records tied to a workflow. If a process crashes, the full history is persisted in the database, making it easy to restore context and resume from where it left off.

A code snippet for DBOS that uses DBOS.write_stream and DBOS.read_stream to stream results back to the client.

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