Workflow Orchestration Patterns

This covers the architectural decisions you'll face when building distributed workflows with Temporal. It breaks down the critical workflow vs activity boundary (orchestration logic stays in workflows, external calls go in activities), walks through saga patterns for distributed transactions, and explains Temporal's determinism constraints that trip up most newcomers. The examples focus on real patterns like entity workflows for shopping carts and compensation logic for payment flows. What I appreciate here is the concrete guidance on when NOT to use workflow orchestration. Too many teams reach for it when a simple API call would suffice.

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last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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$ npx -y skills add wshobson/agents --skill workflow-orchestration-patterns --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

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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