Introduction to Temporal#

Temporal is a durable execution engine. You write workflows as ordinary code – if/else, loops, function calls – and Temporal guarantees that code runs to completion even when processes crash, machines fail, or deployments happen mid-execution. It eliminates the need to build retry logic, state machines, and recovery mechanisms by hand.

This article introduces the core concepts, architecture, and use cases. It is the first in a series that takes you from zero to running production workflows on Kubernetes.

Temporal Namespaces and Task Queues#

Namespaces and task queues are Temporal’s two primary organizational mechanisms. Namespaces provide isolation – separate history, retention, and access. Task queues route work to specific workers. Together, they determine where workflows run and how long their history is kept.

For the underlying architecture, see Introduction to Temporal.

Namespaces#

A namespace is a logical isolation boundary. Every workflow belongs to exactly one namespace. Namespaces provide history isolation (workflows cannot see across boundaries), independent retention policies, per-namespace search attributes, and scoped access control.