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workflow-orchestration-patterns

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by wshobson · part of wshobson/agents

Design durable workflows with Temporal for distributed systems. Covers workflow vs activity separation, saga patterns, state management, and determinism constraints. Use when building long-running processes, distributed transactions, or microservice orchestration.

🧩 One of 7 skills in the wshobson/agents package — works on its own, and pairs well with its siblings.

This is the playbook your agent receives when the skill activates — you don't need to read it to use the skill, but it's here to audit before installing.

Workflow Orchestration Patterns

Master workflow orchestration architecture with Temporal, covering fundamental design decisions, resilience patterns, and best practices for building reliable distributed systems.

When to Use Workflow Orchestration

Ideal Use Cases (Source: docs.temporal.io)

  • Multi-step processes spanning machines/services/databases
  • Distributed transactions requiring all-or-nothing semantics
  • Long-running workflows (hours to years) with automatic state persistence
  • Failure recovery that must resume from last successful step
  • Business processes: bookings, orders, campaigns, approvals
  • Entity lifecycle management: inventory tracking, account management, cart workflows
  • Infrastructure automation: CI/CD pipelines, provisioning, deployments
  • Human-in-the-loop systems requiring timeouts and escalations

When NOT to Use

  • Simple CRUD operations (use direct API calls)
  • Pure data processing pipelines (use Airflow, batch processing)
  • Stateless request/response (use standard APIs)
  • Real-time streaming (use Kafka, event processors)

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Best Practices

Workflow Design

  1. Keep workflows focused - Single responsibility per workflow
  2. Small workflows - Use child workflows for scalability
  3. Clear boundaries - Workflow orchestrates, activities execute
  4. Test locally - Use time-skipping test environment

Activity Design

  1. Idempotent operations - Safe to retry
  2. Short-lived - Seconds to minutes, not hours
  3. Timeout configuration - Always set timeouts
  4. Heartbeat for long tasks - Report progress
  5. Error handling - Distinguish retryable vs non-retryable

Common Pitfalls

Workflow Violations:

  • Using datetime.now() instead of workflow.now()
  • Threading or async operations in workflow code
  • Calling external APIs directly from workflow
  • Non-deterministic logic in workflows

Activity Mistakes:

  • Non-idempotent operations (can't handle retries)
  • Missing timeouts (activities run forever)
  • No error classification (retry validation errors)
  • Ignoring payload limits (2MB per argument)

Operational Considerations

Monitoring:

  • Workflow execution duration
  • Activity failure rates
  • Retry attempts and backoff
  • Pending workflow counts

Scalability:

  • Horizontal scaling with workers
  • Task queue partitioning
  • Child workflow decomposition
  • Activity batching when appropriate

Additional Resources

Official Documentation:

  • Temporal Core Concepts: docs.temporal.io/workflows
  • Workflow Patterns: docs.temporal.io/evaluate/use-cases-design-patterns
  • Best Practices: docs.temporal.io/develop/best-practices
  • Saga Pattern: temporal.io/blog/saga-pattern-made-easy

Key Principles:

  1. Workflows = orchestration, Activities = external calls
  2. Determinism is non-negotiable for workflows
  3. Idempotency is critical for activities
  4. State preservation is automatic
  5. Design for failure and recovery