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# Durable Execution (Temporal/Inngest) | Distributed Systems Deep Dives With Ex-Google SWE

**[Jordan has no life](https://daily.dev/sources/jordan-has-no-life)** · 18 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Durable execution frameworks let developers write code without manually handling distributed systems concerns like crashes, retries, and at-least-once processing. Temporal is presented as the leading open-source solution, with an explanation of its workflows, activities, sticky queues, and history service architecture that caches activity results to enable deterministic replay after failures. Inngest, the video's sponsor, is compared against Temporal, highlighting its pub/sub model for decoupled event-driven workflows, a lighter-weight webhook-based worker design instead of persistent polling connections, single-binary deployment, and heavier reliance on Redis for state versus Temporal's pluggable database backends (MySQL, Postgres, Cassandra).

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT9k8OSjzX8>

## Questions this post answers

### What is durable execution and why does it matter for agentic coding tools like Claude Code?

Durable execution lets code keep running correctly across crashes, restarts, and long idle gaps without the developer handling retries, replication, or scaling manually. It matters for agentic coding because an agent's execution can pause indefinitely waiting on tool calls or user input, and the underlying server could crash or fail requests at any point; durable execution frameworks guarantee the workflow still completes at least once.

_Explore how daily.dev surfaces deep dives on durable execution for teams building reliable agentic workflows._

### How does Temporal ensure a workflow doesn't repeat side effects like sending an email twice after a crash?

Temporal caches the results of every activity call (started, completed, and returned data) in its history service, backed by a database like MySQL, Postgres, or Cassandra. When a workflow replays after a failure, cached activity results are substituted back in instead of re-executing them, though this only guarantees determinism and speed, not true exactly-once semantics, so activities still need to be idempotent.

_daily.dev helps engineers comparing Temporal's replay guarantees against real idempotency requirements before shipping._

### What is the main architectural difference between Temporal and Inngest for running background workflows?

Temporal requires a cluster of workers that continuously long-poll in-memory task queues on Temporal's backend servers, with workflows explicitly kicking off other workflows. Inngest instead uses pub/sub, where publishing an event lets multiple decoupled subscribers spawn their own durable workflows, and workers just expose a single lightweight HTTP webhook that Inngest pings, rather than maintaining persistent polling connections; Inngest also leans on Redis for state versus Temporal's pluggable databases.

_Developers weighing Temporal against Inngest for workflow orchestration track comparisons like this on daily.dev._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Durable Execution: Build reliable software in an unreliable world](https://daily.dev/posts/durable-execution-build-reliable-software-in-an-unreliable-world-2rmzujbwi) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [“This Can’t Possibly Work”: What I Learned at a Temporal.io Workshop](https://daily.dev/posts/this-can-t-possibly-work-what-i-learned-at-a-temporal-io-workshop-dit0ioyod) · Foojay.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Temporal hits 3,000 paying customers with its crash-proof workflow engine](https://daily.dev/posts/temporal-hits-3-000-paying-customers-with-its-crash-proof-workflow-engine-0pq440ota) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Why your platform control plane belongs on Temporal](https://daily.dev/posts/why-your-platform-control-plane-belongs-on-temporal-iafpsqfpz) · Temporal · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#workflow-orchestration](https://daily.dev/tags/workflow-orchestration)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/durable-execution-temporal-inngest-distributed-systems-deep-dives-with-ex-google-swe-i0ijql691)

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