Checked 4 October 2026. Figures for Temporal come from its own docs, repository and company pages.
At a glance
| Property | OpenWOP | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A protocol for AI-workflow runs plus a conformance suite | A durable-execution runtime (docs) |
| Licence | Spec CC BY 4.0, code Apache 2.0 | MIT (licence) |
| Languages | Any language that speaks HTTP; SDKs for TypeScript, Python and Go | Eight official SDKs (SDKs) |
| History | An append-only event log in a shared, closed vocabulary (events) | An append-only Event History of Temporal-specific events (docs) |
| Human approval | A first-class approval interrupt (interrupt) | Built with Signals or Updates (docs) |
| Replay and fork | Fork as a new run, in replay or branch mode (replay) | Deterministic replay for recovery; Reset ends the old run and starts a new one |
| Wire spec | REST and Server-Sent Events, OpenAPI and AsyncAPI, conformance suite | gRPC protos (temporalio/api); we found no third-party server |
| Maturity | New: the spec repo started in May 2026; no independent host | More than 2,900 customers (about) |
| Managed option | A reference app | Temporal Cloud (pricing) |
When to choose Temporal
- You need durable execution in production now, in any domain, with timers, retries and task queues at scale.
- You want a mature managed service and SDKs in eight languages.
- You are comfortable writing approval and agent patterns yourself on top of Signals and Activities, or using Temporal's agent SDK integrations.
When OpenWOP fits
- You want AI-workflow concepts (approval interrupts, agent events, fork without repeating side effects) as a portable wire contract rather than code patterns.
- You want clients and tools that work against any compatible host, checked by a conformance suite.
OpenWOP borrowed per-run version pinning from Temporal. It is months old, has one steward, and no independent organisation has implemented a host yet.
Using them together
The spec describes how an OpenWOP host could be built on Temporal: a run maps to a workflow, an interrupt's resolution to a signal, and a step to an activity. Nobody has built such a host yet.
Common questions
Is OpenWOP a Temporal alternative?
No. Temporal is an engine that runs your code durably; OpenWOP is a contract a host exposes, which could itself run on Temporal.
Doesn't Temporal already do replay?
Yes. Temporal's replay rebuilds workflow state for recovery and testing. OpenWOP's fork creates a new run from any event, and a host that advertises replay must not perform side effects a second time.