Friction

Temporal

temporal.io · Workflow automation

Durable execution platform for reliable, long-running workflows.

48 items · 65 source threads · 2 source types · updated 2026-04

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Pain points 22

ItemAreaSeveritySupportLast seen
Stale internode gRPC connections to terminated pods on Kubernetes

After scale-down, rolling updates or node drains the servers keep dialing IPs of deleted pods, producing continuous timeouts. The team considers StatefulSets, which would diverge from the official Helm chart.

Affects: Teams running the official Helm chart on Kubernetes

Reliability & bugsCauses churn3 sources2026-04

“After upgrading to v1.30.4, the cluster exhibits permanent ringpop membership”

“Temporal servers keep stale internode gRPC connections after Kubernetes pods are terminated (during scale-down, rolling updates, or node drains)”

NULL-to-string scan errors block workflows after upgrade to 1.27.0

After upgrading, history lookups fail with a NULL scan error on a column, making start operations unavailable and preventing system workflows from starting.

Affects: Self-hosters on SQL persistence

Self-hosting & upgradesCauses churn3 sources2025-09

“internal clients in a standalone, containerized Temporal service are unable to establish connections to the internal frontend service”

“error converting NULL to string is unsupported after upgrade to v1.27.0”

Creating custom search attributes fails with Elasticsearch 403 on OpenSearch

Adding a custom search attribute via CLI fails because the server user lacks permission to update the Elasticsearch mapping on a managed OpenSearch domain, so advanced visibility cannot be extended.

Affects: Self-hosters using AWS OpenSearch and Postgres

Permissions & securityBlocks work3 sources2023-08

“unable to update Elasticsearch mapping: elastic: Error 403 (Forbidden): no permissions for [] and User”

“It happens occasionally that one of the three (randomly) will be lost after the CLI command show up the registering is succeeded”

Single schedule becomes inaccessible and stops running

A schedule page returns a gateway timeout and the CLI describe command fails, with no server errors logged. The affected schedules also no longer run, and upgrading did not help.

Affects: Self-hosters on Postgres using the auto-setup image

Reliability & bugsCauses churn2 sources2024-12

“The schedules do not run anymore either”

“After running for a period of time, the worker cannot get the corresponding task”

Server stuck in a loop failing to reach Postgres, workflows stall

On a self-hosted ARM64 cluster against RDS Postgres, the history service loops on a database connection error and workflows stop progressing, with no known reproduction.

Affects: Self-hosters on AWS RDS Postgres

Reliability & bugsCauses churn2 sources2024-09

“Workflows are stuck and the server logs indicate the history service is stuck in a loop trying to connect to a Postgres 14.12 DB”

“50% of all CPU load (4 cores) just from opening new connections”

History service uses too much memory

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

PerformanceCauses churn2 sources2024-07
Self-hosting Temporal has little documentation and community support

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

DocumentationCauses churn2 sources2024-05
Official 1.28.0 server image ships with known vulnerable components

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Permissions & securityBlocks work2 sources2026-03
auto-setup image cannot connect to Postgres that requires TLS

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Setup & onboardingBlocks work2 sources2021-12
Server crashes when the AWS RDS IAM auth token expires

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsCauses churn1 source2022-07
Oversized workflow arguments leave an execution with corrupt empty history

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsCauses churn1 source2021-02
Matching service Prometheus metric cardinality grows without bound

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reporting & analyticsBlocks work1 source2026-04
Workflow platforms demand large cognitive investment, worse when self-hosted

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceBlocks work1 source2024-06
Stuck workflows show In Progress with errors only buried in event log

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsBlocks work1 source2024-05
Visibility lists completed workflows as running

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsBlocks work1 source2024-04
Visibility processor fails reading JSONB rows, workflows show wrong status

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsBlocks work1 source2023-04
Running a sample twice on Scylla fails and CPU spikes

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsBlocks work1 source2022-03
Backlogged tasks can be starved because new tasks sync-match first

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

PerformanceBlocks work1 source2022-02
Workflows poorly suited to request-response because of execution latency

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

PerformanceAnnoyance1 source2024-02
gRPC health check can fail right after the server is already responding

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsAnnoyance1 source2023-10
Workflow interceptors cannot tell replay from first execution

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2022-12
Warning logs repeat every second after adding a node to the cluster

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsAnnoyance1 source2020-06

Feature requests 26

ItemAreaSeveritySupportLast seen
Pluggable authorizer without recompiling Temporal

Adding an authorization implementation requires recompiling the server. The user proposes a plugin-based or external-policy authorizer and offers to contribute it.

Affects: Teams needing custom authorization rules

Permissions & securityBlocks work3 sources2025-11

“Compiling external services, temporal server, for custom authentication is inconvenient”

“We're currently modifying temporal open source project and build our own image”

Support Entra ID token auth for Postgres in self-hosted Temporal

Teams on Azure want managed identity authentication to Postgres to avoid secrets. One team maintains internal patches to the server and SQL tool and wants this supported upstream, since patches are a burden.

Affects: Teams self-hosting on Azure with managed Postgres

Permissions & securityBlocks work2 sources2026-01

“The existing `Connect` hook is undocumented and requires making local code changes and custom builds, making it impractical for most users”

“A team in my organization is currently maintaining a set of patches that adds this support to temporal-server and temporal-sql-tool binaries”

Transfer child workflows to the new run when parent continues as new

When a parent calls continue as new, its children are not carried over and just follow the parent close policy. Users want them transferred to the new parent run.

API & developer experienceBlocks work2 sources2022-03

“Currently the child workflow is not transferred and follows the parentClosePolicy”

“Currently, if a parent workflow exits before a child workflow has started the child is not going to start at all”

Support MongoDB as a persistence store

A company standardised on MongoDB Atlas wants to avoid running additional databases for backup and restore. They are evaluating Temporal as a replacement for Celery and offer development capacity.

Affects: Company standardised on MongoDB Atlas

IntegrationsBlocks work2 sources2021-12

“I'm working in a company that heavily uses MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas”

“Have you considered adding a DynamoDB persistence option”

Custom authentication between frontend and other Temporal services

The SDK supports header providers for worker auth, but nothing equivalent exists server-side, so client certificates cannot be replaced for inter-service requests. An interceptor is requested.

Affects: Operators with custom authentication requirements

Permissions & securityAnnoyance2 sources2023-09

“So, I think there is no way to replace client certificates with other authentication method for the requests between Temporal's microservices”

“Users would like to be able to define custom headers where this info is present instead”

Worker service has no gRPC health check handler

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Self-hosting & upgradesAnnoyance2 sources2022-03
Better daylight saving time handling in schedules

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Reliability & bugsBlocks work1 source2025-08
Emit workflow and activity lifecycle events for external consumers

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

IntegrationsBlocks work1 source2022-12
Add pause and unpause for workflows

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceBlocks work1 source2022-06
Server-side encryption of workflow data at rest

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Permissions & securityBlocks work1 source2021-05
Priority task queues with fair scheduling across tenants

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

PerformanceBlocks work1 source2021-04
Publish native arm64 Docker images for Apple Silicon

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Setup & onboardingBlocks work1 source2021-02
Pause and resume Temporal services for blue/green rollouts

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

Self-hosting & upgradesBlocks work1 source2020-11
Force-complete an activity that is retrying without restarting the workflow

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceBlocks work1 source2020-11
Document whether ScyllaDB is supported as a Cassandra backend

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

DocumentationAnnoyance1 source2025-11
Clarify official support status for OpenSearch as visibility store

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

DocumentationAnnoyance1 source2024-04
Schedules should be able to use the workflow id as defined, without a timestamp

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2023-08
Queue duplicate workflow ids instead of rejecting them

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2023-05
Allow naming timers so the UI is readable

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

UI & usabilityAnnoyance1 source2022-08
Retention period per workflow completion status

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

CustomizationAnnoyance1 source2022-03
Allow disabling and deleting namespaces

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

UI & usabilityAnnoyance1 source2021-06
Query a worker for its registered activity and workflow types

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2021-04
Validate input synchronously when starting a workflow

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2020-10
Let a workflow wait for completion of an unrelated external workflow

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2020-08
Different retry options per failure type

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2020-02
Cron option for activities, for example polling for a result

Locked: summary and evidence are part of Sprint Pass and Pro

API & developer experienceAnnoyance1 source2020-02

Workarounds 0

Nothing recorded in this category yet.

Switching reasons 0

Nothing recorded in this category yet.