workflow-orchestration-patterns
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.
72
60%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
92%
0.98xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Passed
No known issues
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./plugins/backend-development/skills/workflow-orchestration-patterns/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that clearly identifies the technology (Temporal), lists specific capabilities (saga patterns, state management, determinism constraints, workflow/activity separation), and provides explicit trigger guidance for when to use it. It uses proper third-person voice and covers natural terms developers would use when seeking help with Temporal-based distributed systems.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions and concepts: workflow vs activity separation, saga patterns, state management, determinism constraints, and durable workflows with Temporal. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (design durable workflows with Temporal, covering workflow vs activity separation, saga patterns, state management, determinism constraints) and 'when' (explicit 'Use when building long-running processes, distributed transactions, or microservice orchestration'). | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes strong natural trigger terms users would say: 'Temporal', 'distributed systems', 'saga patterns', 'long-running processes', 'distributed transactions', 'microservice orchestration', 'workflow', 'activity', 'determinism'. These cover the key terms a developer working with Temporal would use. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive due to the specific mention of 'Temporal' as the technology and domain-specific concepts like saga patterns, determinism constraints, and workflow vs activity separation. Unlikely to conflict with generic workflow or distributed systems skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
20%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This skill reads more like a Temporal concepts overview or study guide than actionable instructions for Claude. It is excessively verbose, explaining well-known distributed systems concepts without providing any executable code examples despite being about a specific SDK (Temporal). The content would be significantly improved by cutting conceptual explanations in half and replacing them with concrete, copy-paste-ready Temporal SDK code in Python or TypeScript.
Suggestions
Add executable code examples using the Temporal SDK (Python or TypeScript) for at least the saga pattern, entity workflow, and retry configuration — these are the core patterns and currently have zero runnable code.
Cut 'When to Use' and 'When NOT to Use' sections significantly — Claude already understands when distributed orchestration is appropriate. Reduce to 2-3 bullet points maximum.
Remove explanations of general concepts Claude already knows (what idempotency is, what fan-out/fan-in means, what a saga pattern is) and focus on Temporal-specific implementation details and gotchas.
Split detailed pattern implementations (saga, entity, fan-out, async callback) into separate reference files and keep SKILL.md as a concise overview with links, improving progressive disclosure.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The skill is extremely verbose at ~250+ lines, explaining many concepts Claude already knows (what a saga pattern is, what idempotency means, what fan-out/fan-in is). Lists like 'When NOT to Use' and extensive 'Ideal Use Cases' are padding. Much of this is general distributed systems knowledge that doesn't need to be spelled out. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | Despite covering a code-heavy domain (Temporal workflows), there is zero executable code anywhere in the skill. Everything is described abstractly ('Configure Retry: Initial retry interval, Backoff coefficient...') rather than shown with concrete Temporal SDK code examples. The closest to actionable content is pseudocode-level patterns like 'Register compensation BEFORE executing.' | 1 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The saga pattern section provides a clear sequence (register compensation → execute → compensate in reverse on failure), and the general workflow patterns are logically ordered. However, there are no validation checkpoints, no explicit verification steps, and no feedback loops for error recovery in the actual implementation guidance. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The content has clear section headers and logical organization, but it's a monolithic wall of text that could benefit from splitting detailed patterns (saga, entity, fan-out) into separate reference files. The 'Additional Resources' section links to external docs but doesn't reference any companion skill files. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 6 / 12 Passed |
Validation
100%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 11 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
No warnings or errors.
- Repository
- wshobson/agents
- Commit
27a7ed9
- Reviewed
Table of Contents
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