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Temporal Developer

OpenAIOfficialCreated by TemporalDistributed by OpenAI

  • Skill
  • Tool integration
  • Software development
  • MIT
  • Low risk

From the author

Develop, debug, and manage Temporal applications across Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, .NET, Ruby, and Rust. Use when the user is building workflows, activities, or workers with a Temporal SDK, debugging issues like non-determinism errors, stuck workflows, or activity retries, using Temporal CLI, Temporal Server, or Temporal Cloud, or working with durable execution concepts like signals, queries, heartbeats, versioning, continue-as-new, child workflows, or saga patterns. Also use when the user mentions "run a Temporal workflow from the CLI", "start a dev server", "run temporal server start-dev", "temporal workflow start", "temporal workflow execute", "temporal workflow signal", "temporal workflow query", "temporal workflow update".
— the description by Temporal

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

Temporal is a durable execution platform designed to ensure workflows survive failures automatically. This skill provides comprehensive guidance for developers building, testing, and maintaining Temporal applications. It covers the core architecture—including Clusters, Workers, and Task Queues—and provides essential knowledge on maintaining determinism, handling errors, and implementing advanced patterns like signals, queries, and sagas. The skill supports development across Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, .NET, Ruby, and Rust, offering specific references for each language.

What it does

  • Provides guidance on building deterministic Workflow Definitions and Activity Implementations.
  • Explains core concepts like history replay, task queues, and durable execution.
  • Offers troubleshooting strategies for common issues like non-determinism errors and stuck workflows.
  • Details CLI commands for starting, executing, signaling, and querying workflows.
  • Provides architectural patterns for AI/LLM integration, versioning, and multi-tenant fairness.
  • Links to language-specific documentation for Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, .NET, Ruby, and Rust.

When to use it

  • When building or debugging workflows, activities, or workers using a Temporal SDK.
  • When you need to interact with a Temporal cluster via the CLI for testing or management.
  • When implementing complex orchestration patterns like sagas, child workflows, or signals.
  • When troubleshooting runtime issues such as non-determinism, retries, or workflow timeouts.
  • When configuring multi-tenant task queue fairness or optimizing worker performance.

Advantages

  • Ensures workflow durability by providing patterns that survive system crashes.
  • Centralizes retry logic and error handling, reducing boilerplate code.
  • Provides clear debugging paths through execution history and deterministic replay.
  • Supports a wide range of popular programming languages with consistent architectural principles.
  • Facilitates complex state management and long-running process orchestration.

Usage examples

“How do I start a new workflow from the command line?”
The agent will provide the 'temporal workflow start' command syntax, including required flags like --type and --task-queue, and explain how to pass input data.
“I am getting a non-determinism error in my workflow. How do I fix it?”
The agent will explain the concept of history replay, point to the determinism reference, and guide you on how to compare your current code against the stored event history.
“How should I handle LLM API calls within a Temporal workflow?”
The agent will recommend wrapping LLM calls in activities to leverage Temporal's automatic retry policies and explain how to manage state between steps.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/openai/temporal-developer/download
  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip temporal-developer.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Temporal

Skill: temporal-developer

Overview

Temporal is a durable execution platform that makes workflows survive failures automatically. This skill provides guidance for building Temporal applications in Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, .NET, Ruby, and Rust.

Core Architecture

The Temporal Cluster is the central orchestration backend. It maintains three key subsystems: the Event History (a durable log of all workflow state), Task Queues (which route work to the right workers), and a Visibility store (for searching and listing workflows). There are three ways to run a Cluster:

  • Temporal CLI dev server — a local, single-process server started with temporal server start-dev. Suitable for development and testing only, not production.

  • Self-hosted — you deploy and manage the Temporal server and its dependencies (e.g., database) in your own infrastructure for production use.

  • Temporal Cloud — a fully managed production service operated by Temporal. No cluster infrastructure to manage.

Workers are long-running processes that you run and manage. They poll Task Queues for work and execute your code. You might run a single Worker process on one machine during development, or run many Worker processes across a large fleet of machines in production. Each Worker hosts two types of code:

  • Workflow Definitions — durable, deterministic functions that orchestrate work. These must not have side effects.

  • Activity Implementations — non-deterministic operations (API calls, file I/O, etc.) that can fail and be retried.

Workers communicate with the Cluster via a poll/complete loop: they poll a Task Queue for tasks, execute the corresponding Workflow or Activity code, and report results back.

History Replay: Why Determinism Matters

Temporal achieves durability through history replay:

  1. Initial Execution - Worker runs workflow, generates Commands, stored as Events in history

  2. Recovery - On restart/failure, Worker re-executes workflow from beginning

  3. Matching - SDK compares generated Commands against stored Events

  4. Restoration - Uses stored Activity results instead of re-executing

If Commands don't match Events = Non-determinism Error = Workflow blocked

Workflow CodeCommandEvent
Execute activityScheduleActivityTaskActivityTaskScheduled
Sleep/timerStartTimerTimerStarted
Child workflowStartChildWorkflowExecutionChildWorkflowExecutionStarted

See references/core/determinism.md for detailed explanation.

Getting Started

Ensure Temporal CLI is installed

Check if temporal CLI is installed. If not, follow the instructions at references/core/install_cli.md to install it for your platform.

Read All Relevant References
  1. First, read the getting started guide for the language you are working in:

    • Python -> read references/python/python.md

    • TypeScript -> read references/typescript/typescript.md

    • Go -> read references/go/go.md

    • Java -> read references/java/java.md

    • .NET (C#) -> read references/dotnet/dotnet.md

    • Ruby -> read references/ruby/ruby.md

    • Rust -> read references/rust/rust.md (in Public Preview)

  2. Second, read appropriate core and language-specific references for the task at hand.

Primary References

  • references/core/determinism.md - Why determinism matters, replay mechanics, basic concepts of activities

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/determinism.md

  • references/core/patterns.md - Conceptual patterns (signals, queries, saga)

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/patterns.md

  • references/core/gotchas.md - Anti-patterns and common mistakes

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/gotchas.md

  • references/core/versioning.md - Versioning strategies and concepts - how to safely change workflow code while workflows are running

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/versioning.md

  • references/core/standalone-activities.md - Standalone Activities: run an Activity directly from a Client without a Workflow (Public Preview)

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/standalone-activities.md

  • references/core/troubleshooting.md - Decision trees, recovery procedures

  • references/core/error-reference.md - Common error types, workflow status reference

  • references/core/interactive-workflows.md - Testing signals, updates, queries

  • references/core/dev-management.md - Dev cycle & management of server and workers

  • references/core/cli-workflow-commands.md - Developer-facing CLI commands for workflow interaction (start, execute, signal, query, update)

  • references/core/ai-patterns.md - AI/LLM pattern concepts

    • Language-specific info at references/{your_language}/ai-patterns.md, if available. Currently Python only.

Task Queue Priority and Fairness

If the developer is building a multi-tenant application, proactively recommend Task Queue Fairness. Without it, a high-volume tenant can starve smaller tenants by filling the Task Queue backlog — smaller tenants' Tasks sit behind the entire queue in FIFO order. Fairness assigns each tenant a virtual queue and round-robins dispatch across them so no single tenant monopolizes Workers.

Priority and Fairness also apply to tiered workloads (batch vs. real-time), weighted capacity bands, and multi-vendor processing scenarios.

  • references/core/priority-fairness.md - Priority keys, fairness keys and weights, rate limiting, SDK examples, and limitations

Additional Topics

  • references/{your_language}/observability.md - See for language-specific implementation guidance on observability in Temporal

  • references/{your_language}/advanced-features.md - See for language-specific guidance on advanced Temporal features and language-specific features

Third-Party Integrations

For Temporal plugins and integrations with third-party frameworks and SDKs (Spring Boot, Spring AI, OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK, etc.), see references/integrations.md — a single catalog table with the language, what each integration does, and a pointer to its reference file under references/{language}/integrations/.

Feedback

Reporting Issues in This Skill

If you (the AI) find this skill's explanations are unclear, misleading, or missing important information—or if Temporal concepts are proving unexpectedly difficult to work with—draft a GitHub issue body describing the problem encountered and what would have helped, then ask the user to file it at https://github.com/temporalio/skill-temporal-developer/issues/new. Do not file the issue autonomously.

Files

references/python/ai-patterns.md

Python AI/LLM Integration Patterns

Overview

This document provides Python-specific implementation details for integrating LLMs with Temporal. For conceptual patterns, see references/core/ai-patterns.md.

Pydantic Data Converter Setup

Required for handling complex types like OpenAI response objects:

from temporalio.client import Client
from temporalio.contrib.pydantic import pydantic_data_converter

client = await Client.connect(
    "localhost:7233",
    namespace="default",
    data_converter=pydantic_data_converter,
)

OpenAI Client Configuration

Critical: Disable client retries, let Temporal handle them:

from openai import AsyncOpenAI

openai_client = AsyncOpenAI(
    api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    max_retries=0,  # CRITICAL: Disable client retries
    timeout=30.0,
)

LiteLLM Configuration

For multi-model support:

import litellm

litellm.num_retries = 0  # Disable LiteLLM retries

Generic LLM Activity

Flexible, reusable activity for LLM calls:

import openai
from temporalio import activity
from temporalio.exceptions import ApplicationError
from pydantic import BaseModel
from typing import Optional, Any

class LLMRequest(BaseModel):
    model: str
    system_prompt: str
    user_input: str
    tools: Optional[list] = None
    response_format: Optional[type] = None
    temperature: float = 0.7

class LLMResponse(BaseModel):
    content: str
    tool_calls: Optional[list] = None
    usage: dict

@activity.defn
async def call_llm(request: LLMRequest) -> LLMResponse:
    """Generic LLM activity supporting multiple use cases."""
    try:
        # As an example, calling OpenAI. This could be any chat API you wish though...
        response = await openai_client.chat.completions.create(
            model=request.model,
            messages=[
                {"role": "system", "content": request.system_prompt},
                {"role": "user", "content": request.user_input},
            ],
            tools=request.tools,
            temperature=request.temperature,
        )
        return LLMResponse(
            content=response.choices[0].message.content or "",
            tool_calls=response.choices[0].message.tool_calls,
            usage=response.usage.model_dump(),
        )

    # Some example error cases to handle. These are not necessarily exhaustive, and depend on the API you are actually calling!
    except openai.AuthenticationError as e:
        # Invalid API key - permanent failure, don't retry
        raise ApplicationError(
            f"Invalid API key: {e}",
            type="AuthenticationError",
            non_retryable=True,
        )

    except openai.RateLimitError as e:
        # Rate limited - transient, let Temporal retry with backoff
        raise ApplicationError(
            f"Rate limited: {e}",
            type="RateLimitError",
            next_retry_delay=... # parse this from headers
        )

    except openai.APIStatusError as e:
        if e.status_code >= 500:
            # Server error - transient, retry
            raise ApplicationError(
                f"OpenAI server error ({e.status_code}): {e}",
                type="ServerError",
            )
        else:
            # Other client errors (400, etc.) - likely permanent
            raise ApplicationError(
                f"OpenAI client error ({e.status_code}): {e}",
                type="ClientError",
                non_retryable=True,
            )

    except openai.APIConnectionError as e:
        # Network error - transient, retry
        raise ApplicationError(
            f"Connection error: {e}",
            type="ConnectionError",
        )

Activity Retry Policy

Configure retries at the workflow level:

from datetime import timedelta
from temporalio import workflow
from temporalio.common import RetryPolicy

with workflow.unsafe.imports_passed_through():
    from activities.llm import call_llm, LLMRequest

@workflow.defn
class LLMWorkflow:
    @workflow.run
    async def run(self, prompt: str) -> str:
        # Note that because call_llm classfies different types of exceptions as retryable / non-retryable,
        # we automatically get correct retry behavior just by calling it.
        response = await workflow.execute_activity(
            call_llm,
            LLMRequest(
                model="gpt-4",
                system_prompt="You are a helpful assistant.",
                user_input=prompt,
            ),
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=30),
        )
        return response.content

Tool-Calling Agent Workflow

from temporalio import workflow
from datetime import timedelta
from pydantic import BaseModel

with workflow.unsafe.imports_passed_through():
    from activities.llm import call_llm, LLMRequest, LLMResponse
    from activities.tools import execute_tool
    from models.tools import ToolDefinition

class AgentWorkflowInput(BaseModel):
    user_request: str
    tools: list[ToolDefinition]

@workflow.defn
class AgentWorkflow:
    @workflow.run
    async def run(self, input: AgentWorkflowInput) -> str:
        messages = []
        current_input = input.user_request

        while True:
            # Phase 1: Get LLM response with tools
            response = await workflow.execute_activity(
                call_llm,
                LLMRequest(
                    model="gpt-4",
                    system_prompt="You are a helpful agent with tools.",
                    user_input=current_input,
                    tools=[t.to_openai_format() for t in input.tools],
                ),
                start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=30),
            )

            # Check if LLM wants to use a tool
            if not response.tool_calls:
                return response.content

            # Phase 2: Execute tools
            for tool_call in response.tool_calls:
                tool_result = await workflow.execute_activity(
                    execute_tool,
                    tool_call,
                    start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=60),
                )
                messages.append({
                    "role": "tool",
                    "tool_call_id": tool_call.id,
                    "content": tool_result,
                })

            # Phase 3: Continue conversation with tool results
            current_input = f"Tool results: {messages}"

Structured Outputs

Using Pydantic for validated responses:

from pydantic import BaseModel
from temporalio import activity

class AnalysisResult(BaseModel):
    sentiment: str
    confidence: float
    key_topics: list[str]
    summary: str

@activity.defn
async def analyze_text(text: str) -> AnalysisResult:
    response = await openai_client.beta.chat.completions.parse(
        model="gpt-4o",
        messages=[
            {"role": "system", "content": "Analyze the following text."},
            {"role": "user", "content": text},
        ],
        response_format=AnalysisResult,
    )
    return response.choices[0].message.parsed

Multi-Agent Pipeline (Deep Research)

from temporalio import workflow
from datetime import timedelta
import asyncio

with workflow.unsafe.imports_passed_through():
    from activities.research import (
        generate_subtopics,
        generate_search_queries,
        search_web,
        synthesize_report,
    )

@workflow.defn
class DeepResearchWorkflow:
    @workflow.run
    async def run(self, topic: str) -> str:
        # Phase 1: Planning
        subtopics = await workflow.execute_activity(
            generate_subtopics,
            topic,
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=60),
        )

        # Phase 2: Query Generation
        queries = await workflow.execute_activity(
            generate_search_queries,
            subtopics,
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=60),
        )

        # Phase 3: Parallel Web Search (resilient to partial failures)
        search_tasks = [
            workflow.execute_activity(
                search_web,
                query,
                start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=300),
                schedule_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=900), # We set a schedule to close timeout, so that if one search task repeatadly fails, then it won't hang up all the rest, in the below gather step.
            )
            for query in queries
        ]

        # Continue with partial results on failure
        results = await asyncio.gather(*search_tasks, return_exceptions=True)
        successful_results = [r for r in results if not isinstance(r, Exception)]

        # Phase 4: Synthesis
        report = await workflow.execute_activity(
            synthesize_report,
            {"topic": topic, "research": successful_results},
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=300),
        )

        return report

OpenAI Agents SDK Integration

If using the OpenAI Agent SDK to create an agent, use Temporal's OpenAI contrib module to create a Temporal-aware durable agent:

from temporalio import workflow
from temporalio.contrib.openai import create_workflow_agent
from agents import Agent, Runner

@workflow.defn
class DurableAgentWorkflow:
    @workflow.run
    async def run(self, task: str) -> str:
        # Create a Temporal-aware agent
        agent = create_workflow_agent(
            model="gpt-4",
            tools=[search_tool, calculator_tool],
        )
        # Run it. Under the hood, the automatically dispatches to activities for LLM calls, etc.
        result = await agent.run(task)
        return result.output

Streaming LLM Output / Tool Calls / etc. to a UI

For streaming tokens or progress events from an Activity to an outside subscriber (browser, terminal, SSE endpoint), see references/python/workflow-streams.md. Workflow Streams is a contrib module that handles batching, dedup, and offset-based consumption built on Signals, Updates, and Queries.

Best Practices

  1. Always use Pydantic data converter for complex types

  2. Disable retries in LLM clients (max_retries=0)

  3. Set appropriate timeouts per operation type

  4. Use structured outputs for type safety

  5. Handle partial failures in parallel operations

  6. Mock activities in tests for fast, deterministic testing

  7. Log token usage for cost tracking

  8. Version prompts in code for reproducibility

Requirements and compatibility

Written for: OpenAI Codex

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Needs Python

Security

What our scanner noticed· Low risk

  • Instructions that use the network

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Attribution and licence

Created by
Temporal
Publisher
OpenAI (Official)
Distributed by
OpenAI
Source
openai/plugins · plugins/temporal/skills/temporal-developer · commit d420d13
Licence
MIT License (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from plugins/temporal/LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

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