What it does
Temporal is a durable execution platform built around Workflows and Activities. It persists execution history so workers can reconstruct workflow state through deterministic replay.
Why it’s interesting
Retries, timers, and progress tracking are part of the execution model. Activities still need appropriate idempotency, and compensating actions must be designed explicitly rather than assumed to happen automatically.
Real-world use case
Orchestrate an order flow that reserves stock, charges payment, and requests shipping. Define retries and compensations for each external side effect.
What I can learn
- 01
Event sourcing
reconstruct workflow state from recorded history.
- 02
Distributed scheduling
separate task matching from workflow history management.
- 03
Saga design
implement compensations and idempotent activities.
One thing to explore
Workflow history service
Follow the implementation and connect it to the learning points above.
Explore the source (opens in a new tab)10-Minute Challenge
Start the development server
Before you start: Homebrew for the shown installation command; starting a sample worker may require its SDK dependencies.
- Install the Temporal CLI with Homebrew, or use the official release for your platform.
- Start the development server and open http://localhost:8233.
- Explore a TypeScript starter at https://github.com/temporalio/samples-typescript and identify its Workflow and Activity boundaries.
brew install temporaltemporal server start-dev