Why should I use heartbeats in Temporal activities?

Heartbeats allow Temporal to detect worker crashes quickly and provide progress updates for activities that run longer than 30 seconds, preventing them from timing out unnecessarily.

What is the difference between StartToClose and ScheduleToClose timeouts?

StartToClose limits a single execution attempt, while ScheduleToClose limits the total time from the moment the activity is scheduled until it completes, including all retries.

What are the best strategies for ensuring activity idempotency?

Common strategies include using unique Idempotency Keys provided by the workflow, wrapping operations in database transactions, or using conditional writes with version checks.

How do I handle non-retryable errors in Temporal?

You can define specific error types in the RetryPolicy or return a temporal.NewApplicationError with a non-retryable flag to prevent retries on business logic failures like 'InvalidInput'.

Temporal Activity Design

Name: Temporal Activity Design
Author: therealbill

bytherealbill

0•

API Development

Provides expert guidance and implementation patterns for building robust, idempotent Temporal activities with optimized timeout and retry configurations.

The activity-design skill empowers developers to build resilient distributed systems using the Temporal workflow engine. It provides specialized knowledge on configuring complex timeout parameters like ScheduleToClose and StartToClose, implementing heartbeat mechanisms for long-running tasks, and ensuring idempotency through keys and database transactions. By following these patterns, developers can ensure their activities—ranging from external API calls to database operations—are fault-tolerant, observable, and performant within a Claude Code environment.

Key Features

01Standardized timeout configuration for ScheduleToClose, StartToClose, and Heartbeat

020 GitHub stars

03Heartbeat monitoring patterns for long-running or resource-intensive tasks

04Best practices for activity registration and dependency injection in Go

05Idempotency strategies including keys, transactions, and conditional writes

06Advanced retry policy implementation with exponential backoff and non-retryable errors

Use Cases

01Optimizing external API integration with specific retry and timeout budgets

02Designing fault-tolerant payment processing systems using idempotency keys

03Implementing progress tracking for long-running data migrations or batch jobs

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add therealbill/mynet activity-design

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill