aid: actor-model
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/actor-model/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Actor Model
type: Index
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
- Actor Model
- Concurrency
- Distributed Systems
description: The Actor Model is a mathematical model of concurrent computation where the fundamental unit of computation is
  an actor, an entity that processes messages asynchronously and maintains its own private state. It provides a powerful abstraction
  for building highly concurrent and distributed systems, used in frameworks like Akka and languages like Erlang.
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: actor-model:actor-model-api
  name: Actor Model API
  tags:
  - Actor Model
  - Concurrency
  - Distributed Systems
  - Supervision
  - Cluster
  properties:
  - type: HumanURL
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
  - type: BaseURL
    url: https://api.example.com/actor-system/v1
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/actor-model.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/
  - type: NaftikoCapability
    url: capabilities/actor-model-actors.yaml
  - type: NaftikoCapability
    url: capabilities/actor-model-cluster.yaml
  - type: NaftikoCapability
    url: capabilities/actor-model-health.yaml
  - type: NaftikoCapability
    url: capabilities/actor-model-mailboxes.yaml
  - type: NaftikoCapability
    url: capabilities/actor-model-supervisors.yaml
  description: Reference API for actor lifecycle management, message passing, supervision hierarchies, cluster membership,
    and system health in actor model systems. Applicable to frameworks including Akka, Erlang/OTP, Microsoft Orleans, and
    Proto.Actor.
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
- type: Documentation
  url: https://doc.akka.io/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/akka
- type: SpectralRules
  url: rules/actor-model-spectral-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/actor-model-vocabulary.yaml
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/actor-model-context.jsonld
features:
- name: Actor Lifecycle Management
  description: Spawn, monitor, and stop actors with full visibility into current state, mailbox size, and restart history.
  tags:
  - Actor Model
  - Lifecycle
- name: Message Passing
  description: Send typed messages to actor mailboxes and inspect pending message queues for debugging.
  tags:
  - Actor Model
  - Message Passing
- name: Supervision Hierarchies
  description: Inspect and query supervisor trees with strategies including one-for-one, one-for-all, and rest-for-one.
  tags:
  - Supervision
  - Fault Tolerance
- name: Cluster Management
  description: List cluster members, their roles and statuses, and the total actor distribution across nodes.
  tags:
  - Cluster
  - Distributed Systems
- name: Sharding
  description: Inspect shard partitions, entity counts, and their hosting nodes in sharded cluster topologies.
  tags:
  - Sharding
  - Distributed Systems
- name: System Health
  description: Monitor actor throughput, error rates, dead letter counts, and overall system health.
  tags:
  - Health
  - Observability
useCases:
- name: Distributed Platform Operations
  description: Operate and observe distributed actor-based platforms with real-time actor and cluster data.
  tags:
  - Operations
  - Platform
- name: Fault Tolerance Debugging
  description: Debug supervision hierarchies, mailbox backlogs, and restart cascades in production systems.
  tags:
  - Debugging
  - Fault Tolerance
- name: AI-Assisted Actor Management
  description: Use MCP-exposed tools to give AI assistants visibility into actor system state for incident response.
  tags:
  - AI
  - MCP
- name: Concurrency Education
  description: Learn and experiment with actor model patterns through a reference implementation API.
  tags:
  - Education
  - Learning
integrations:
- name: Akka
  description: Akka (Scala/Java) is the most widely-used actor framework, compatible with these API patterns.
  tags:
  - Akka
  - Scala
- name: Erlang OTP
  description: Erlang's OTP supervision tree model is the original inspiration for actor-based fault tolerance patterns.
  tags:
  - Erlang
  - OTP
- name: Microsoft Orleans
  description: Orleans (.NET) virtual actor framework uses grain-based actors with automatic lifecycle management.
  tags:
  - Orleans
  - .NET
solutions:
- name: Concurrent System Design Reference
  description: Use the Actor Model API as a design reference when building concurrent distributed services.
  tags:
  - Reference
  - Design
- name: Platform Observability
  description: Integrate actor system management endpoints into monitoring and incident response workflows.
  tags:
  - Observability
  - Monitoring
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com