Curious how people use systems like this or DBOS etc.

Do you self-host? Do you use the same DB as the application DB? Do you use this for API background jobs, batch jobs, cron jobs?

As someone who uses Airflow a lot but not for background jobs, I am interested in the pros and cons of various approaches.

Yes and yes. DBOS self hosted , pointed to same application DB. Systems like these (durable execution) fit well with agents or LLM driven on demand workflows. You might be attaching multiple flaky local or remote api call tools. Many complex LLM workflows that you don’t want to one shot but break down into chain of prompt can be added to river/dbos + LLM , providing much needed retries and bit of concurrency control.

Airflow perhaps fits better with scheduled recurring ETL workflows.