“We could not make this without Temporal super system for workflows”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so +1 · source ↗
Temporal
Durable execution platform that runs workflows as code, persisting their state so they survive crashes and retry failed steps automatically.
Works with AI agents:llms.txtTemporal is an engine for code that has to finish even when servers crash, networks drop or a step takes days. You write a long-running process, such as an order flow, a sign-up sequence or an AI agent loop, as an ordinary function, and Temporal keeps it going to completion.
There are two halves. The Temporal Service (an open-source Go server plus a database) records an append-only event history for every workflow run. Your Workers, which you host, run your code using one of the SDKs: Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, .NET, PHP or Ruby. After a failure, a worker replays the history to rebuild the workflow's state. That is why workflow code must be deterministic: calls to APIs, LLMs or databases go into separate "activities", which are retried on their own.
What a small team gets: retries and timeouts declared rather than hand-written, timers and signals that can wait for months, a web UI to inspect any run and its history, and a single-binary dev server (temporal server start-dev) for local work. You either run the service yourself on Postgres, MySQL or Cassandra, or use Temporal Cloud, which is offered in many AWS and Google Cloud regions.
The main cost is the programming model. Changing a workflow while old runs are still in flight requires versioning, and each run's history is capped (51,200 events or 50 MB), so very long loops need "continue-as-new". Self-hosting means operating a database and, for heavy search, Elasticsearch.
Where it fits
How Temporal itself is built
4 tools, from its own code, website and Product Hunt page.
Who uses it
29 makers' products, each linked to the source that shows it, and 15 open-source projects that declare it in their code.
“We chose Temporal because email automations, reminders, and background jobs need to survive retries, delays, and service interruptions. Durable workflows give us a much stronger foundation than stitching together fragile queues and cron jobs.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so +1 · source ↗“The orchestration engine behind delayed events like trial expiries and billing reminders.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so +1 · source ↗“It powers our multi-step workflows across agent actions. Temporal gives us durability, visibility, and precise control. Battle-tested orchestration with strong developer UX.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“We chose Temporal because it provides a reliable foundation for long-running tasks.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Temporal is Gram's workflow engine.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Temporal is like React for asynchronous and scheduled tasks. It lets us build complex workflows with confidence and resilience, making sure they work perfectly every time.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“We’ve been using Temporal.io and value its reliability and flexibility. Writing our pipelines in code gives us control over our orchestration and lets us tailor workflows to our needs. Instead of rigid structures, Temporal.io allows us to innovate while keeping processes smooth. It’s a solid tool for automating operations and scaling our applications”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Durable runtimes are highly necessary for apps like this. Temporal was the natural choice here.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Temporal gave us incredibly good reliability and cold/warm start times - we're able to start threads in well under a second thanks to it and Modal.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Offloop lets people and Agents hand work back and forth, and some of that work can run for a long time. Temporal makes those runs durable, so retries, timeouts, and deploys do not erase progress or force us to rebuild the orchestration ourselves.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“We use Temporal under the hood. They enable us to manage complex, large-scale workflows with reliability and efficiency. Their platform's automatic task retries and robust observability tools have been instrumental in scaling our operations seamlessly.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“We use this to keep out app from crashing. It's great.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“As a team building complex workflows in voice AI, Roark wouldn’t exist without Temporal. It gave us the reliability of a distributed system without drowning in glue code. Temporal turned what used to be a mess of retries, timers, and state machines into something we can trust to run at scale.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Best durable execution engine!”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Temporal gave us the most reliable way to run long-lived workflows with built-in retries, state, and observability, without reinventing orchestration ourselves.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Amazing for tagging async jobs and querying their status. Very dev-friendly in standalone mode, and very powerful in production mode.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Supports failure-proof applications and workflows.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Reliable execution of tasks is the backbone of many of the solutions we offer and Temporal is a great enabler for this.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Helped us provide great infra for agents!”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Great product and platform.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗“Temporal is the backbone of our infrastructure at DitLead allowing us to build resilient workflow that automate outreach campaign.”
Background Jobs & CronMaker says so · source ↗Open source: a project that declares Temporal as a dependency in its public code — verifiable, but not necessarily a live product.
What makers say
16 makers on why they use Temporal, in their own words on Product Hunt.
We’ve been using Temporal.io and value its reliability and flexibility. Writing our pipelines in code gives us control over our orchestration and lets us tailor workflows to our needs. Instead of rigid structures, Temporal.io allows us to innovate while keeping processes smooth. It’s a solid tool for automating operations and scaling our applications
Breyta.aiSep 2026 ↗We use Temporal under the hood. They enable us to manage complex, large-scale workflows with reliability and efficiency. Their platform's automatic task retries and robust observability tools have been instrumental in scaling our operations seamlessly.
Julep AISep 2026 ↗Offloop lets people and Agents hand work back and forth, and some of that work can run for a long time. Temporal makes those runs durable, so retries, timeouts, and deploys do not erase progress or force us to rebuild the orchestration ourselves.
OffloopSep 2026 ↗We chose Temporal because email automations, reminders, and background jobs need to survive retries, delays, and service interruptions. Durable workflows give us a much stronger foundation than stitching together fragile queues and cron jobs.
SlashySep 2026 ↗It powers our multi-step workflows across agent actions. Temporal gives us durability, visibility, and precise control. Battle-tested orchestration with strong developer UX.
RunLLMSep 2026 ↗Loved and watch-outs
Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises, with how Product Hunt tags its reviews.
- Durable workflows survive retries, timeouts, crashes and deploys, replacing fragile stacks of queues, timers and cron jobs. PHPH 2PH 3HN
- Retries and compensating actions are handled by the platform, so application code describes business logic rather than failure handling. HNHN 2HN 3PH
- It is mature and battle-tested, reliably finishing workflows that sleep for months. HNHN 2HN 3PH
- The server is MIT-licensed and ships its own queue, persistence and UI, so self-hosters only manage workers. HNHN 2HN 3
Reliability and open issues
- minor UI Disruptions in GCP us-central1 Oct 2026
- none Customers in us-east4 may have experienced elevated API latencies and resource exhausted errors Oct 2026
- minor Increased latency in region us-west-2 Sep 2026
- Add ability for workflow to wait for completion of an external workflow👍 75 · opened Aug 2020 · active Feb 2026
- Provide priority task queues👍 52 · opened Apr 2021 · active Dec 2025
- MongoDB as Persistent👍 48 · opened Dec 2021 · active Apr 2026
- Different retry options based on failure type👍 35 · opened Feb 2020 · active May 2026
- Add SignalWithStart\UpdateWithStart command👍 33 · opened Jul 2020 · active Jun 2026
Who switches
Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "X to Y" — real code changes moving a project from one tool to another, by developers in general. Open a row to see the pull requests.
BullMQ → Temporal3 PRs
- Migrate job execution from BullMQ to Temporal workflowsblu59204/CareerCraftsAI · 2026-09-26
- feat: migrate from BullMQ to Temporal for workflow orchestrationNOJV-TW/NOJV · 2026-04-02
- Moving from BullMQ to Temporal - big changegitroomhq/postiz-app · 2026-01-05
Alternatives to Temporal
All alternatives by situation →On Product Hunt, people weigh it against: Trigger.dev.
Questions makers ask about Temporal
Does Temporal Cloud run my code?
No. Temporal Cloud only runs the Temporal Server; your Workers and application code run in your own containers or VMs, wherever you host them. source ↗
Which languages can I write workflows in?
Temporal has SDKs for Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, .NET, PHP and Ruby, each with its own developer guide. source ↗
Why must workflow code be deterministic?
Temporal rebuilds a workflow's state by replaying its event history, so the code must issue the same calls in the same order every time. Anything non-deterministic, such as API calls, LLM requests or database queries, belongs in activities, which run outside replay and are retried automatically. source ↗
What do I need to self-host it?
The only required dependency is a persistence database; Cassandra, PostgreSQL and MySQL are tested for production, while SQLite is for development and testing only. For local work, temporal server start-dev starts a complete service with the web UI in one binary. source ↗
Which regions does Temporal Cloud run in?
You create each namespace in a chosen AWS or Google Cloud region, including locations in North America, South America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Temporal recommends picking the region closest to your workers. source ↗
Can Temporal Cloud read my workflow data?
Not if you enable client-side encryption. The Data Converter encrypts payloads on your workers before they reach Temporal Cloud, and a Codec Server you run decrypts them for the web UI without sharing keys. Temporal states it is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and compliant with GDPR and HIPAA. source ↗
What uptime does Temporal Cloud guarantee?
Standard namespaces have a 99.9% contractual guarantee and namespaces using the High Availability feature have 99.99%, measured per namespace. source ↗
Is there a limit on how long a workflow can run?
There is no time limit, but each run's event history is capped at 51,200 events or 50 MB, with warnings starting at 10,240 events or 10 MB. Long-lived workflows hand their state to a new run with fresh history using continue-as-new. source ↗
Is Temporal free?
Yes — there is a free tier a small product can run on; paid use starts at $50 per 1M actions. source ↗
Is Temporal open source or self-hostable?
Open source, and you can self-host it. source ↗
Can AI coding agents work with Temporal?
It serves an llms.txt docs index.
Who uses Temporal?
29 makers' products we track, each with a source, and 15 open-source projects declare it in their code. source ↗