automation

Cadence: Scalable Workflow Automation

Name: Cadence: Scalable Workflow Automation
Author: cadence-workflow

Execute long-running tasks reliably with Cadence, ideal for startup founders, backed by 9.3k+ GitHub stars

intermediate⏱ 1-2 hours💵 Free (self-hosted)

9,360 stars898 forksGoQuality 8/10Updated 7/1/2026100% free · open source

What it is

Build and run complex workflows that run in the background.

What you can make with it

Automations like: when a new Stripe customer signs up, execute a series of tasks across services to welcome them.

How it helps

Cadence helps you create efficient workflows that can handle complex tasks without being tied to a specific user interaction.

Real use case example

"A founder wants to automate a welcome process for new customers signing up on Stripe. They use Cadence to build a workflow that adds a new customer to Notion, sends a welcome email via Mailgun, and updates their customer profile. When a new customer signs up, the workflow executes in the background."

If you're new

Pick Cadence up when you need to build a simple workflow and want a user-friendly interface.

If you're senior

Senior engineers and professionals reach for Cadence when building complex distributed systems and need high scalability and availability.

Common confusion cleared up

Don't confuse Cadence with task automation tools like Zapier; Cadence is designed for more complex workflows and distributed systems.

Best inside these AI tools

Self-hostedClaude DesktopCursorGemini Code Assist

Pairs with

Stripe webhookNotion databaseMailgun APIAmazon SNS

Why we list it on WorkflowStacks: Cadence is a best-in-class orchestration engine with a large community and open-source availability.

What it does

Cadence executes long-running tasks reliably, allowing startup founders to orchestrate asynchronous business logic in a scalable and resilient way.

Install / run

docker-compose up

When to use it

•When you have tasks that take a long time to complete and need to be retried upon failure
•When you need to manage complex workflows with multiple tasks and dependencies
•When you require a highly available and durable system to handle your business logic

Quick start

1Clone the Cadence repository: git clone https://github.com/cadence-workflow/cadence.git
2Change into the Cadence directory: cd cadence
3Start the Cadence service: docker-compose up
4Create a new Cadence workflow: use the Cadence CLI command 'cadence workflow create'
5Register a worker to execute tasks: use the Cadence CLI command 'cadence worker start'

Ready-to-paste prompt

cadence workflow create --task_list=main --workflow_id=example --input='{"key":"value"}'

Heads up: You need to have Docker and Docker Compose installed on your system to run Cadence, and you must also set the Cadence configuration file 'cadence.yaml' correctly to connect to the Cadence service

Saves to your device