Statemarker

Statemarker is a generic term used in software design to denote an object, token, or value that records or conveys the current state within a state machine, workflow, or long-running process. As a marker, it does not by itself perform business logic but enables the system to reason about progress, resume points, or validation conditions. In practice, a statemarker can take the form of a simple flag, an enumeration value, a dedicated marker object, or a small data structure carrying minimal metadata such as a state name, timestamp, or transition identifier.

Statemarkers are used in various patterns. They aid persistence and recovery by serving as checkpoints in long-running tasks or event-sourced streams. They support debugging and auditing by embedding traceable markers in state transitions. They also appear in user-interface and orchestration layers to indicate which step of a process is active, completed, or suspended, helping correct sequencing and error handling.

Common design considerations include choosing the right granularity, ensuring thread-safety and atomicity when updating markers, and avoiding accidental mutation that could corrupt state. In typed languages, statemarkers can be represented as distinct types or enums to enforce valid transitions at compile time. In dynamic contexts, marker values should be serialized consistently to external stores or logs to enable recovery and analysis.

See also: state machine, checkpoint, event sourcing, state transition, marker.