Guide · Agent skill
How to use the Workflow Orchestration Patterns agent skill
Updated · written with AI from the project's own documentation and checked against our catalogue data
The workflow-orchestration-patterns skill is a reference guide that an AI agent loads when you ask for help designing reliable, multi-step processes with Temporal, an open-source workflow engine. It is aimed at backend engineers building processes such as orders, bookings or approvals that must survive crashes and retries. After this guide you will know how to install the skill, how to phrase requests that trigger it, and what to check before you rely on its advice.
Workflow Orchestration Patternswshobson/agents · MIT Download the skill Quick start
- 1Download the ZIP. Get the skill ZIP from our page and unzip it. It contains SKILL.md and references/details.md.
- 2Place the folder. Move the unzipped folder into ~/.claude/skills/ for personal use, or into .claude/skills/ in your project.
- 3Or upload it in the Claude apps. Open Settings, go to Capabilities, then Skills, and upload the skill.
- 4Describe a long-running process. Ask in plain language about a multi-step process, distributed transaction or microservice flow, and name Temporal if you use it.
- 5Separate workflow from activities. Ask the agent which steps should be workflow code and which should be activities that call external services.
- 6Check determinism and retries. Ask the agent to review your code for non-deterministic calls and for missing timeouts or retry rules.
What the skill makes the agent do
The skill mainly shapes the agent's design advice and code suggestions. It does not run anything itself. Its core teaching is to split work into workflows, which hold the coordinator logic and decisions, and activities, which are the individual steps that call outside services such as APIs, databases or the network.
The skill also covers patterns such as saga rollbacks for all-or-nothing behaviour across several services, retries, timeouts, and keeping workflow code deterministic so it can recover after failures.
- Workflow vs activity boundaries
- Saga patterns and compensation logic
- Retries, timeouts and error classification
- Determinism constraints for workflow code
- State management across long-running processes
Install the skill from a ZIP or the Claude apps
Download the ZIP for this skill from our page and unzip it. For a personal setup, place the unzipped folder in ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, place it in that project's .claude/skills/ folder instead.
If you use the Claude apps, you can upload the skill instead. Open Settings, go to Capabilities, then Skills, and upload it there.
- Personal: ~/.claude/skills/
- Project only: .claude/skills/ inside your project
- Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills
Trigger the skill with natural requests
You do not need a special command. Describe the problem in plain language that matches the skill's scope: long-running processes, distributed transactions, or microservice orchestration. The skill's description names these topics, so requests that mention them are the most likely to load it.
Name Temporal when you can. Mentioning it tells the agent to use the skill's Temporal-specific guidance rather than generic workflow advice.
- Design a Temporal workflow for an order process that charges a card, reserves stock and sends a confirmation.
- Which parts of this approval flow should be activities and which should be workflow code in Temporal?
- Write a saga with compensating steps for a booking that spans three microservices.
- Review my Temporal workflow for anything that breaks determinism.
Example: reviewing a workflow for determinism
Suppose your workflow code reads the current time with a standard library call. The skill's pitfalls list flags this: workflow code should use the Temporal equivalent, workflow.now(), rather than datetime.now(). Similarly, it warns against calling external APIs directly from workflow code, since those calls belong in activities.
Ask the agent to point out each such line and suggest where it should move. Check its suggestions against the Temporal SDK you are using before changing code.
What you need before you rely on it
The skill assumes you are building with the Temporal SDK. If you actually build the system, you also need a Temporal server or cluster. If you only want design discussion, you can use the skill without either.
The skill runs no scripts and makes no network requests. The skill's content assumes familiarity with distributed systems and Temporal's SDK, so it is less useful for non-developers.
- Temporal SDK (if you build the system)
- A Temporal server or cluster (if you build the system)
- No scripts are run by the skill
- The skill does not use the network
Tips for getting good results
Keep workflows focused on one responsibility and use child workflows to keep them small. Keep activities short-lived, idempotent so they are safe to retry, and always set timeouts. Distinguish retryable errors from non-retryable ones so validation errors are not retried forever.
The skill also notes a 2MB per-argument payload limit, so avoid passing large data between steps. Test locally with the time-skipping test environment it recommends.
- Make activities idempotent and always set timeouts
- Classify errors as retryable or non-retryable
- Watch the 2MB per-argument payload limit
- Use the time-skipping test environment for local tests
- Ask for the design first, then review the code yourself
What people use it for
- Designing an order process that charges a payment, reserves stock and sends a confirmation, with retries on failure.
- Planning a booking flow across several microservices that must succeed or roll back together using saga compensation.
- Structuring a human approval process that needs timeouts and escalation.
- Reviewing an existing Temporal workflow for determinism violations such as direct API calls or datetime.now() usage.
Frequently asked questions
Is the workflow-orchestration-patterns skill free?
The skill is published under the MIT licence. Check the licence file in the source repository for the full terms before you reuse it.
How do I install the workflow-orchestration-patterns skill?
Download the ZIP from our page and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/ for personal use, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder. You can also upload it in the Claude apps under Settings, Capabilities, then Skills.
What does the skill require to run?
The skill itself runs no scripts and uses no network. If you build the system, you need the Temporal SDK and a Temporal server or cluster.
Do I need Temporal to use this skill?
No, you can use it for design advice without installing anything. You only need Temporal if you actually build the workflow system.
When should I not use this skill?
The skill says not to use orchestration for simple CRUD operations or plain request/response APIs. It recommends Airflow or batch processing for pure data pipelines and Kafka or event processors for real-time streaming.
Is it better than other workflow tools?
The skill is specific to Temporal. For batch data pipelines it points to tools like Airflow, and for streaming it points to Kafka, so pick based on the kind of work you have.
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Our verdict
This skill suits backend engineers designing order, booking or approval processes that must survive crashes, and developers new to Temporal who need clear workflow and activity boundaries. It is not useful for simple CRUD apps, data pipelines, streaming, or readers without distributed systems experience. Treat its output as design guidance to verify against the official Temporal documentation before you build.
Download the skill