An invocation is a request to execute a handler. Each invocation has its own unique ID and lifecycle.
Conversation State Management

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Invocation ID

Invocations have a unique Invocation ID starting with inv_. You can find this ID in every place where an invocation is mentioned:
  • The invocations page of the Restate UI
  • Logs and traces (restate.invocation.id), both in Restate and SDKs
  • In CLI commands such as restate invocation ls

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Lifecycle

Invocations follow a well-defined lifecycle: Invocation lifecycle This page describes how to manage invocations in different states.

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Cancel

You can cancel an invocation at any point in its lifecycle. Cancellation has the following characteristics:
  • Frees held resources
  • Cooperates with your handler code to roll back any changes made so far
  • Allows proper cleanup
restate invocations cancel inv_1gdJBtdVEcM942bjcDmb1c1khoaJe11Hbz

# Or bulk cancel, e.g. per service or handler
restate invocations cancel Greeter
restate invocations cancel Greeter/greet
restate invocations cancel CartObject/cart55/add
Cancellation is non-blocking. The API call may return before cancellation completes. In rare cases, cancellation may not take effect - retry the operation if needed.
For proper rollback, handlers must include compensation logic to maintain service state consistency. Check the sagas guide.

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Kill

Use kill when cancellation fails (e.g., when endpoints are permanently unavailable). Killing immediately stops all calls in the invocation tree without executing compensation logic. This may leave your service in an inconsistent state. Only use as a last resort after trying other fixes. Note that one-way calls and delayed calls are not killed because they’re detached from the originating call tree. 
restate invocations kill inv_1gdJBtdVEcM942bjcDmb1c1khoaJe11Hbz

# Or bulk kill, e.g. per service
restate invocations kill Greeter
restate invocations kill Greeter/greet
restate invocations kill CartObject/cart55/add

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Resume

If an invocation retries for too many times, Restate will pause it. When an invocation is paused, you need to resume it manually: 
restate invocations resume inv_1gdJBtdVEcM942bjcDmb1c1khoaJe11Hbz

# Or bulk resume, e.g. per service
restate invocations resume Greeter
Check out the service configuration docs to tune the invocation retry policy, including the retry interval and how many attempts to perform before pausing. You can also resume an invocation that is waiting on a retry timer, instructing Restate to retry immediately.

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Purge

After an invocation completes, it will be retained by Restate for some time, in order to introspect it and, in case of idempotent requests, to perform deduplication. Check out the service configuration docs to tune the retention time. You can also manually purge completed invocations if you need to free up disk space: 
restate invocations purge inv_1gdJBtdVEcM942bjcDmb1c1khoaJe11Hbz

# Or bulk purge, e.g. per service
restate invocations purge Greeter

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Restart as new

Invocations, once completed, can be restarted as new invocations: 
restate invocations restart-as-new inv_1gdJBtdVEcM942bjcDmb1c1khoaJe11Hbz

# Or bulk restart as new, e.g. per service
restate invocations restart-as-new Greeter
The new invocation will have a different invocation ID, but the input and headers of the original request. The old invocation will be left untouched. Keep in mind that when restarting an invocation as new, no partial progress will be kept, meaning all the operations the service executed will be executed again. This feature is not available for workflows.