System Overview
Continuum is split into a browser frontend, a core backend (API server + Temporal orchestration), and independent feature workers that provide the actual workflow nodes.
Node Model & Feature Registration
Every workflow node is defined inside a feature worker — an independent service (e.g. continuum-feature-base, continuum-feature-ai, continuum-feature-cheminformatics, or your own) built with the continuum-worker-springboot-starter. Workers register their nodes centrally so the orchestration service knows which worker to dispatch each node to.
Data Format
All data passed between workflow nodes is Apache Parquet (Snappy-compressed, Avro schema DataRow) — not JSON. This keeps data columnar, compressed, and query-ready from the moment it leaves a node.