The Hidden Infrastructure Cost of Building Human Approval Into Temporal

While Temporal excels at durable execution, implementing a simple human approval gate requires building notification systems, reminder logic, escalation rules, and maintaining a cluster—adding 180+ lines of infrastructure to just 20 lines of workflow code. This reveals a critical gap: orchestration frameworks optimize for complex branching logic but struggle with straightforward human-in-the-loop processes, making lightweight alternatives like AXME more practical for approval-centric workflows.