Running Effect-TS in Cloudflare Workers Without the Pain

Michele M. — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:39:07 +0000

I've been hacking on a Cloudflare Workers app with Effect-TS and ran into the same problem over and over:

👉 I want to run Effects inside React Router loaders/actions.
👉 I need envs (Cloudflare bindings) to build my infra layer (KV, D1, etc).
👉 But you only get env at request time… and Layers want to be provided up-front.

It all started with a stream from @mikearnaldi combining effect in Remix
where he creates this idea of a runtime.

After a few modifications/modernisations for React Router v7, I ended up here:

export const makeInfraLive = (env: Env) =>
  Layer.mergeAll(Db.layer(env), KV.layer(env));

export const makeFetchRuntime = <R, E>(
  makeLiveLayer: ({ env, infra }: { env: Env; infra: ReturnType<typeof makeInfraLive> }) 
    => Layer.Layer<R, E, never>,
) => {
  const wrapRuntime =
    <A, E2, TArgs extends { context: AppLoadContext }>(
      body: (args: TArgs) => Effect.Effect<A, E2, R>,
    ) =>
    async (args: TArgs): Promise<A> => {
      const infra = makeInfraLive(args.context.cloudflare.env);
      const live = makeLiveLayer({ env: args.context.cloudflare.env, infra });
      const runtime = ManagedRuntime.make(live);

      const program = body(args).pipe(Effect.provide(TracingLive));

      return runtime.runPromise(
        Effect.withConfigProvider(program, ConfigProvider.fromJson(args.context.cloudflare.env))
      );
    };

  return wrapRuntime;
};

And here's how it feels to use it in a route:

const runtime = makeFetchRuntime(({ infra }) =>
  Simulations.SimulationsApplicationLayer.pipe(Layer.provide(infra))
);

export const action = runtime(
  Effect.fnUntraced(function* ({ context: { cloudflare: { env } } }) {
    yield* Effect.annotateCurrentSpan({ "http.route": "/forecasts/new" });

    return { message: env.VALUE_FROM_CLOUDFLARE };
  }),
);

Why This Works

Request-scoped env: we only build infra when Cloudflare gives us the env.
Simple composition: each route just declares its Effect program.
Tracing baked in: spans/annotations live at the runtime layer.
No runtime errors: wiring is done once, Effects stay pure.

Takeaway

Cloudflare gives you bindings at request time.
Effect-TS wants Layers up-front.

This little wrapper bridges the two.

I’m using it right now in production-bound code, and it feels both pragmatic and beautiful.

DEV Community: Michele M.

Running Effect-TS in Cloudflare Workers Without the Pain

Why This Works

Takeaway