# cadence-workflow/cadence

Cadence is a distributed, scalable, durable, and highly available orchestration engine to execute asynchronous long-running business logic in a scalable and resilient way.

Repository: https://github.com/cadence-workflow/cadence
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cadence
Homepage: https://cadenceworkflow.io
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: uber, cadence, workflows, orchestration-engine, workflow-automation, distributed-systems, service-bus, service-fabric, services-platform, golang, java
Last push: 2026-08-27T00:00:43+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 96/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 90, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3480, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 64, "gap_med": 28.5, "n_releases_24m": 15}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 9417, forks 909 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:31.076849+00:00)

## What it is
Cadence is an open-source, CNCF-hosted durable execution and workflow orchestration engine originally developed at Uber. It lets developers write fault-tolerant, stateful, long-running workflows as plain code in Go, Java, or Python, with the backend handling retries, timers, event sourcing, and state recovery across failures.

## Use cases
- orchestrate long-running multi-step business processes as code
- replace glue code over message queues, cron jobs, and state tables
- run recurring scheduled workflows with overlap policies and backfill
- implement saga-style compensation and automatic retries for unreliable downstream calls
- build event-driven applications that wait durably for signals or timers
- self-host a workflow engine in your own VPC without vendor lock-in

## When to choose
- your processes span multiple steps with dependencies, retries, and long waits (minutes to years)
- you need durable state that survives worker and server restarts without managing queues or state machines
- you want an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Temporal or managed workflow services
- you need visibility into running workflows via a web UI, CLI, or API
- you're coordinating microservices where exactly-once semantics and partial-failure handling matter

## When to avoid
- you only need simple fire-and-forget async task delivery - a message queue is simpler
- you want to store large business payloads or use it as a database (payloads should stay small)
- your team can't follow workflow determinism constraints (no direct time, network, or threading in workflow code)
- you need a lightweight in-process scheduler rather than a distributed orchestration platform

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: workflow-automation, scheduling, microservices, message-queue, developer-tools
- domain: microservices, backend, developer-tools
- platform: go, jvm, self-hosted, cross-platform
- tags: durable-execution, workflow-engine, orchestration, event-sourcing, saga-pattern, cncf, temporal-alternative, fault-tolerance, automation, docker, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- cadence-workflow/cadence (main) score 96

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:31.076849+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:22:10.049598+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/cadence-workflow/cadence (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:31.076849+00:00, sha cadfb3073dd8)
  - homepage: https://cadenceworkflow.io (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.948068+00:00, sha ce2487ee5c98)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/docs/get-started (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.957141+00:00, sha 0e5303b5c53f)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/docs/concepts (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.960748+00:00, sha 4e4ac68da895)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/docs/concepts/schedules (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.962281+00:00, sha e2f4d03afae4)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/docs/concepts/workflow-engine (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.967768+00:00, sha aa929b454d92)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/docs/concepts/open-source-workflow-engine (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.969537+00:00, sha 44c8c35d60b1)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/faq/best-practices (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.958952+00:00, sha 121c25a690ea)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/faq/cadence-faq (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.964313+00:00, sha d3f5f13e2ee8)
  - site_page: https://cadenceworkflow.io/faq/migrate-from-temporal (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:15.966091+00:00, sha 05c3ab7732ef)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.