Toren vs Temporal
Temporal is the best generic durable-execution engine there is, and if you already run it, building agents on it is a reasonable project. Toren is the same core idea (record every step, replay on resume) built specifically for agents, with the agent layer that Temporal leaves to you: model-call replay with cost accounting, context compaction, sandboxes, approvals, chat channels, cross-agent calls. It runs as one container on the Postgres you already have.
Pick Temporal if you need polyglot workflows, multi-region scale, or one engine for everything from payments to agents. Pick Toren if the thing you are running is an agent and you would rather not build the agent layer yourself.
At a glance
| Temporal | Toren | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Durable execution engine for arbitrary code | Durable agent runtime |
| Unit of replay | Activity results, timers, signals | Model calls and tool calls (with cost per call) |
| Language | Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET, PHP, Ruby | TypeScript on Node |
| Agent layer (model loop, compaction, sandboxes, approvals, channels) | Yours to build, or via SDK integrations (OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, Vercel AI SDK) | Built in |
| Self-host footprint | Frontend, history, matching, worker services + a persistence store (Cassandra, MySQL, Postgres) + visibility store | One container + Postgres |
| Hosted option | Temporal Cloud (from $100/mo) | None today (planned) |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Maturity | Years in production at scale; 22k+ stars | Pre-1.0; production deployments measured in single digits |
| Cost visibility | Not a concept the engine has | Per-run receipt: calls made, calls replayed, dollars not re-paid |
Where Temporal wins
Say it plainly, because the page is useless otherwise.
- Languages. Seven SDKs. Toren is TypeScript.
- Scale and topology. Multi-region, Nexus for cross-namespace calls, decades of workflow-engine lessons. Toren's fleet is workers racing for Postgres leases; it is designed for a team's agents, not a bank's settlement pipeline.
- One engine for everything. If agents are one workload among many durable workflows, Temporal gives you one operational model for all of them.
- Ecosystem. Official integrations with the OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, and the Vercel AI SDK, plus a large community.
- A hosted product that exists. Temporal Cloud is real and priced. Toren's hosted tier is a roadmap line.
What you build on Temporal to run an agent
An agent on Temporal is a workflow whose activities are model calls and tool calls. That works, and it is durable. The list below is what sits between "works" and "production agent", and each item is something Toren ships:
- Model-call replay with a receipt. Temporal replays activity results, so a completed model call is not repeated. It does not know a model call costs money or track how many were replayed versus paid. Toren records tokens per call and prints, per run, how many calls were replayed from the log and how many dollars were not re-paid. The CI kills the worker after every step of a run and asserts that number.
- Context compaction. Agents that work for hours outgrow the context window. On Temporal you design the compaction and its determinism yourself. Toren compacts in two recorded tiers, driven by the provider's own token usage, and the compaction is an event that replays by value.
- Sandboxes. A container per run with bash and workspace files, network denied by default, resource caps, human approval per command by default. On Temporal this is an activity you write and a container you manage.
- Approvals. A tool call that needs a human parks the run at zero compute; the approval arrives via CLI, HTTP, MCP, or a Telegram reply, is recorded, and never re-asks on replay. Temporal has signals, which are the right primitive; the approval semantics on top are yours.
- Channels. Telegram bots per agent with deny-by-default pairing, exactly-once delivery cursors, file delivery, observer mode. Cross-agent calls with mutual consent in config.
- Tool semantics as declarations. Every Toren tool declares effects, idempotency, and approval; the runtime writes intent before executing and re-runs under the same idempotency key on resume. A tool that is external, unkeyed, and ungated is flagged at boot. Temporal gives you activity idempotency keys; the policy layer is yours.
- Legibility while alive. Errors land on the run record; retries back off with a cap; an opt-in attempts cap and wall-clock budget fail a run with a timeout class; workers heartbeat their version so skew across containers is visible in
/healthz. The Temporal UI is excellent for workflow history; the agent-specific questions ("what did it touch, what did it cost, why did it stop") you answer by instrumenting activities.
None of these are impossible on Temporal. Each is a week or two you spend, then maintain.
Operations
Self-hosting Temporal means four services, a persistence store, a visibility store, and the UI server, plus upgrade discipline across them. Self-hosting Toren means docker compose up with the Postgres you already back up; the runtime keeps to its own schemas next to your tables. The cost of that simplicity is the scale ceiling above: Toren is built for a team's agents on one database.
Determinism and replay, compared honestly
Both require the code between recorded steps to be deterministic. Temporal enforces it with workflow sandboxing and versioning APIs, and has years of tooling for it. Toren verifies it with a digest per recorded step: if a code change makes a recorded step diverge, the run invalidates from that step forward and re-pays only what changed, and messages a human sent are never voided. Temporal's approach is more mature; Toren's is narrower and simpler because the workload is narrower.
Who should pick which
- Existing Temporal cluster, polyglot teams, mixed workloads, multi-region requirements: Temporal, and build the agent layer on it with one of its agent SDK integrations.
- A TypeScript team running agents for real users on their own infrastructure, who wants durability, approvals, sandboxes, channels, and a cost receipt without assembling them: Toren.
- Neither if you need a hosted product today with an SLA: Temporal Cloud exists, Toren's does not.
Frequently asked
Isn't Toren just Temporal for agents? Same idea, different layer. Temporal is the engine; Toren is a runtime that ships the agent layer on top of the same record-and-replay idea, specialized for the one workload where replaying a step has a dollar cost.
Can I use Toren with Temporal? Not as a Temporal SDK. Toren has its own worker and event log on Postgres. A Temporal workflow could trigger Toren runs over the HTTP API, but that is two systems, not one.
Is the replay really exactly-once for tool calls? For keyed tools, effectively-once downstream: the same idempotency key is re-sent on resume and the provider dedupes. Unkeyed tools are at-least-once, documented, and flagged at boot when they also skip approval. Execution guarantees, honestly stated.
How mature is Toren? Pre-1.0. A public kill matrix in CI, a versioning contract that treats replay compatibility as a breaking-change boundary, and production deployments in single digits. Read the FAQ before betting a business on it.