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Connect to Camunda 8 from Node.js with a typed REST client

By BPMN Kit · June 22, 2026

Camunda 8’s REST API is large — deployment, process instances, user tasks, incidents, decisions, and more. @bpmnkit/api wraps it in a single typed client: 180 methods across 30+ resource classes, generated from Camunda’s own OpenAPI specification, so every request and response is typed.

Connecting

import { CamundaClient } from "@bpmnkit/api";

const client = new CamundaClient({
  baseUrl: "https://api.cloud.camunda.io",
  auth: {
    type: "oauth2",
    clientId: process.env.CAMUNDA_CLIENT_ID,
    clientSecret: process.env.CAMUNDA_CLIENT_SECRET,
    audience: process.env.CAMUNDA_AUDIENCE,
  },
});

OAuth2, Bearer, and Basic auth are all supported. Under the hood, the client caches tokens (LRU + TTL) and retries transient failures with exponential backoff, so a flaky network blip during a deploy doesn’t fail the whole request.

Deploying and starting a process

// Deploy a process definition
await client.process.deploy({ resources: [{ content: xml }] });

// Start a new instance
const instance = await client.process.startInstance({
  bpmnProcessId: "my-flow",
  variables: { orderId: "ord-123" },
});

xml here can come from anywhere — including a diagram generated with @bpmnkit/core in the same process, so a build step can generate, simulate, and deploy a process without leaving TypeScript.

Observing what happens

The client is a TypedEventEmitter, so you can hook into the request lifecycle without wrapping every call yourself:

client.on("request", (e) => console.log(e.method, e.url));
client.on("error", (e) => metrics.inc("api.error"));

That’s useful for logging, metrics, or feeding a dashboard — you get visibility into every call the client makes against Camunda 8 without threading logging through each call site.

Where to go next