Skipper: Building Airbnb’s embedded workflow engine

Skipper is Airbnb's embedded workflow engine designed to enable durable execution of multi-step business processes without requiring external orchestration infrastructure.

• •Embedded architecture runs within each service as a library, eliminating single points of failure and avoiding dedicated infrastructure dependencies
• •Stores workflow state in the host service's existing database (MySQL or Unified Data Store) without requiring a separate persistence layer
• •Provides a simple programming model with Workflows and Actions abstractions that developers write in plain Kotlin/Java code with minimal annotations
• •Supports durable operations including automatic checkpointing of action results, conditional waits, retry logic, and signal-based coordination
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