saga-orchestration
Implement saga patterns for distributed transactions and cross-aggregate workflows. Use this skill when implementing distributed transactions across microservices where 2PC is unavailable, designing compensating actions for failed order workflows that span inventory, payment, and shipping services, building event-driven saga coordinators for travel booking systems that must roll back hotel, flight, and car rental reservations atomically, or debugging stuck saga states in production where compensation steps never complete.
- Installs
- 10.8K
- Last 24h
- +29
- Trending rank
- #4424
- Security
- Pass
Install
Works with every agent the skills CLI supports.
npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents --skill saga-orchestration- 01
Install
Run the command in your project. The CLI asks which agents to install for.
- 02
Describe the task
Ask your agent for something this skill covers. It loads saga-orchestration automatically when relevant.
- 03
Review the result
The agent follows the SKILL.md steps, scripts and references bundled with the skill.
Security audits
Independent scans of the skill's instructions and bundled files.
SKILL.md
The instructions your agent reads when the skill is triggered.
Saga Orchestration
Patterns for managing distributed transactions and long-running business processes without two-phase commit.
Inputs and Outputs
What you provide:
- Service boundaries and ownership (which service owns which step)
- Transaction requirements (which steps must be atomic, which can be eventual)
- Failure modes for each step (transient vs. permanent, retry policy)
- SLA requirements per step (informs timeout configuration)
- Existing event/messaging infrastructure (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
What this skill produces:
- Saga definition with ordered steps, action commands, and compensation commands
- Orchestrator or choreography implementation for your chosen pattern
- Compensation logic for each participant service (idempotent, always-succeeds)
- Step timeout configuration with per-step deadlines
- Monitoring setup: state machine metrics, stuck saga detection, DLQ recovery
When to Use This Skill
- Coordinating multi-service transactions without distributed locks
- Implementing compensating transactions for partial failures
- Managing long-running business workflows (minutes to hours)
- Handling failures in distributed systems where atomicity is required
- Building order fulfillment, approval, or booking processes
- Replacing fragile two-phase commit with async compensation
Detailed section: Core Concepts
Moved to references/details.md.
Detailed section: Templates
Moved to references/details.md.
Best Practices
Do's
- Make every step idempotent — Commands may be replayed on broker reconnect
- Design compensations carefully — They are the most critical code path
- Use correlation IDs — The
saga_idmust flow through every event and log - Implement per-step timeouts — Never wait indefinitely for a participant reply
- Log state transitions —
saga_id,step_name,old_state → new_stateon every change - Test compensation paths explicitly — Inject failures at each step index in integration tests
Don'ts
- Don't assume instant completion — Sagas are async and may take minutes
- Don't skip compensation testing — The rollback path is the hardest to get right
- Don't couple services directly — Use async messaging, never synchronous calls inside a saga step
- Don't ignore partial failures — A step that partially executed still needs compensation
- Don't use a global timeout — Each step has different latency characteristics
Troubleshooting
Saga stuck in COMPENSATING state
A saga enters compensation but never reaches FAILED. This means a compensation handler is throwing an unhandled exception and never publishing SagaCompensationCompleted. Add dead-letter queue (DLQ) handling to compensation consumers and ensure every compensation action publishes a result event even when the underlying operation was already rolled back.
async def handle_release_reservation(self, command: Dict):
try:
await self.release_reservation(command["original_result"]["reservation_id"])
except ReservationNotFoundError:
pass # Already released — treat as success
# Always publish completion, regardless of outcome
await self.event_publisher.publish("SagaCompensationCompleted", {
"saga_id": command["saga_id"],
"step_name": "reserve_inventory"
})
Duplicate saga executions on restart
If your orchestrator service restarts mid-saga, it may replay events and re-execute already-completed steps. Guard every step action with an idempotency key — see Template 3 above.
Choreography saga losing events
In a choreography-based saga, a downstream service may miss an event if it was offline when published. Use a durable message broker (Kafka with replication, RabbitMQ with persistence) and store the current saga state in a dedicated saga_log table so you can replay from the last known good step.
Timeout firing before a slow-but-valid step completes
A step like create_shipment might take up to 15 minutes during peak load but your global timeout is 5 minutes, causing spurious compensation. Make step timeouts configurable per step type — see references/advanced-patterns.md for the TimeoutSagaOrchestrator implementation and the STEP_TIMEOUTS dict pattern.
Compensation order not matching execution order
When two steps both complete before a failure is detected, compensation must run in strict reverse order or you leave data in an inconsistent state. Verify that _compensate() iterates from current_step - 1 down to 0, and add an integration test that deliberately fails at each step index to confirm correct rollback order.
Advanced Patterns
The references/ directory contains production-grade implementations not needed for most sagas:
references/advanced-patterns.md— FullSagaOrchestratorabstract base class,TimeoutSagaOrchestratorwith per-step deadlines, detailed bank transfer compensating transaction chain, Prometheus instrumentation, stuck saga PromQL alerts, and DLQ recovery worker.
Related Skills
cqrs-implementation— Pair sagas with CQRS for read-model updates after each step completesevent-store-design— Store saga events in an event store for full audit trail and replay capabilityworkflow-orchestration-patterns— Higher-level workflow engines (Temporal, Conductor) that build on saga concepts
FAQ
What does the saga-orchestration skill do?
Implement saga patterns for distributed transactions and cross-aggregate workflows. Use this skill when implementing distributed transactions across microservices where 2PC is unavailable, designing compensating actions for failed order workflows that span inventory, payment, and shipping services, building event-driven saga coordinators for travel booking systems that must roll back hotel, flight, and car rental reservations atomically, or debugging stuck saga states in production where compensation steps never complete.
How do I install saga-orchestration?
Run npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents --skill saga-orchestration in your project. The skills CLI detects the agents you use and copies the skill into the right folder. For Claude Code you can also place the skill folder at ~/.claude/skills/saga-orchestration/ (personal) or .claude/skills/saga-orchestration/ (project).
Which AI agents can use saga-orchestration?
Any agent that supports the open Agent Skills format (a folder with a SKILL.md file), including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, OpenCode and more.
Is saga-orchestration safe to install?
Security partners have reviewed it: Gen Agent Trust Hub passed; Socket passed; Snyk passed; Runlayer passed; ZeroLeaks passed. As with any skill, read the SKILL.md and bundled scripts before installing.
Who maintains saga-orchestration?
It is published by wshobson in wshobson/agents. It has 10,766 recorded installs.
More from wshobson/agents
typescript-advanced-types
wshobson/agents
Master TypeScript's advanced type system including generics, conditional types, mapped types, template literals, and utility types for building type-safe applications. Use when implementing complex type logic, creating reusable type utilities, or ensuring compile-time type safety in TypeScript projects.
tailwind-design-system
wshobson/agents
Build scalable design systems with Tailwind CSS v4, design tokens, component libraries, and responsive patterns. Use when creating component libraries, implementing design systems, or standardizing UI patterns.
nodejs-backend-patterns
wshobson/agents
Build production-ready Node.js backend services with Express/Fastify, implementing middleware patterns, error handling, authentication, database integration, and API design best practices. Use when creating Node.js servers, REST APIs, GraphQL backends, or microservices architectures.
brand-landingpage
wshobson/agents
Brand-first landing page designer — runs a brand-identity interview (colors, typography, shape language), then generates and iterates on a polished landing page via Stitch with deployment-ready HTML. Use when the user asks to create, design, or build a landing page, homepage, or marketing page and has no established visual direction. Skip when they have a design mockup, need a dashboard or app UI, are working at component level, building a multi-page app, or restyling with known design tokens — use frontend-design instead.
python-testing-patterns
wshobson/agents
Implement comprehensive testing strategies with pytest, fixtures, mocking, and test-driven development. Use when writing Python tests, setting up test suites, or implementing testing best practices.
python-performance-optimization
wshobson/agents
Profile and optimize Python code using cProfile, memory profilers, and performance best practices. Use when debugging slow Python code, optimizing bottlenecks, or improving application performance.
Popular backend & apis skills
find-skills
vercel-labs/skills
Helps users discover and install agent skills when they ask questions like "how do I do X", "find a skill for X", "is there a skill that can...", or express interest in extending capabilities. This skill should be used when the user is looking for functionality that might exist as an installable skill.
entra-app-registration
microsoft/azure-skills
Guides Microsoft Entra ID app registration, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and MSAL integration. USE FOR: create app registration, register Azure AD app, configure OAuth, set up authentication, add API permissions, generate service principal, MSAL example, console app auth, Entra ID setup, Azure AD authentication. DO NOT USE FOR: Key Vault secrets (use azure-keyvault-expiration-audit), general Azure resource security guidance.
google-agents-cli-adk-code
google/agents-cli
This skill should be used when the user wants to "write agent code", "build an agent with ADK", "add a tool", "create a callback", "define an agent", "use state management" — in a project that needs ADK (Agent Development Kit) API patterns and code examples. It provides a quick reference for agent types, tool definitions, orchestration patterns, callbacks, state management, the graph Workflow API, and reference recipes to study. Do NOT use for scaffolding (use google-agents-cli-scaffold) or deployment (use google-agents-cli-deploy).
embedded-captions
heygen-com/hyperframes
Add captions or subtitles to an existing single-subject talking-head video without editing the footage. Use for plain verbatim captions, cinematic captions embedded behind the subject, VFX captions, “炸/特效/酷炫字幕,” or a named identity from the 35-style catalog. Route by visual identity, not by backend engine. The quiet anchor rail is the default; embed every word only when the user explicitly wants a fully cinematic treatment. The workflow runs locally end to end, including transcription and subject matting; split multi-shot footage before applying it.
entra-agent-id
microsoft/azure-skills
Provision Microsoft Entra Agent Identity Blueprints, BlueprintPrincipals, and per-instance Agent Identities via Microsoft Graph, and configure OAuth 2.0 token exchange (fmipath, OBO, cross-tenant) including the Microsoft Entra SDK for AgentID sidecar. USE FOR: Agent Identity Blueprint, BlueprintPrincipal, agent OAuth, fmipath token exchange, agent OBO, Workload Identity Federation for agents, polyglot agent auth, Microsoft.Identity.Web.AgentIdentities. DO NOT USE FOR: standard Entra app registration (use entra-app-registration), Microsoft Foundry agent authoring (use microsoft-foundry).
neon
neondatabase/agent-skills
Overview of Neon, a complete set of cloud backend primitives around Lakebase Postgres: Auth, Object Storage, Functions, the AI Gateway, and Realtime. Start here to choose Neon for undecided login, files, APIs, and LLM calls, set up the CLI or MCP server, and follow the branch-first workflow. Use when building an app or backend on Neon, or when "Neon" or "Lakebase Postgres" is mentioned. Child skill neon-postgres wins for an existing DATABASEURL, SQL, schema, inspect, or search. Child skill neon-auth wins for login, users, sessions, identity routing, and Managed Better Auth setup. Child skill neon-realtime wins for live queries in reactive apps and agents. Also use for object storage, S3, buckets, serverless functions, function triggers, cron, AI gateway, LLM calls, realtime, logs, Loki, Grafana, observability, postgres, database, backend, Claimable Neon, neon.new, or a no-signup database.