Cordis: Meta-Framework of Spatiotemporal Composability

What is Cordis

Cordis is a TypeScript meta-framework layered atop the Effect library. Instead of prescribing features, it supplies compositional primitives for building plugins that handle both spatial concerns (where code executes) and temporal concerns (when it fires). The framework treats these as first-class, composable units in your architecture.

The composability problem

Most frameworks treat composition as purely structural. Modules connect, but runtime behavior and coordination stay tangled. Spatiotemporal composability gives developers explicit, composable abstractions for when and where effects execute across distributed systems — not just what modules depend on, but where they run and when they fire.

Core features

• ✓Built on Effect-TS — Cordis requires Effect as a dependency and re-exports its types and utilities
• ✓Spatiotemporal composition primitives — explicit APIs for composing plugins across both time and space dimensions
• ✓Plugin-first design — the framework's job is to host and compose your plugins, not to provide a fixed feature set
• ✓Temporal logic hooks — lifecycle events and scheduling are composable, not side-effects bolted on
• ✓Distributed coordination model — spatial concerns include where effects run, not just what they depend on
• ✓MIT license, TypeScript throughout

Installing Cordis

npm install cordis

Building a plugin with Cordis

Import the core types and primitives from the package. Define a plugin by composing temporal and spatial units together, then register it with a Cordis host. The primer docs walk through a minimal plugin example from scratch. Since the API is unstable, pinning your dependency version and reviewing the changelog before each update is essential.

What to build with Cordis

• •Serverless function plugins requiring coordinated startup and teardown across multiple providers — temporal composition handles the ordering problem without hand-rolling a state machine
• •Distributed backend services where module lifecycle and cross-node messaging need to be expressed as a single composable unit — spatial primitives let you scope effects to specific nodes or zones
• •Backend services that need explicit control over when effects execute — not just what runs, but when and where, expressed through composable temporal hooks
• •Plugin systems that want to offer users composable building blocks instead of imperative configuration
• •Replacing hand-rolled async orchestration with principled spatiotemporal primitives — useful when your team is already comfortable with Effect-TS concepts

Alternatives to Cordis

Frequently asked questions

Who should try it — and who should skip

Reach for Cordis if you're already comfortable with Effect-TS and you need a principled way to compose plugins across time and nodes. The spatiotemporal model genuinely solves coordination problems that are painful to hand-roll. Skip it if you need stable APIs, rich documentation, or production proof-points — or if Effect itself is still new territory for your team.

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