Borehole · Project · free tier
temporalio/temporal
Free reading: not for reliance
d8f9c6d · 9,882 commits · 3,952 files
Read 2026-10-04

temporalio/temporal: technical due diligence, read from its repository

What Borehole read in temporalio/temporal's code and history at d8f9c6d: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.

DimensionRating
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenancestrong
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturitystrong
Product & Engineering Maturityadequate
Security & Reliability Postureadequate
Observability & Operationsstrong
Fit with the Acquirernot assessable

What the repository says

  • Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed
  • .gitmodules:1: 1 submodule(s) this survey does not read: develop/docker-compose/grafana/provisioning/temporalio-dashboards

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

strong
01.6

service/history/workflow/mutable_state_impl.go is 10,104 lines, 71× this codebase's median file

adequate

The median source file here is 141 lines. 30 files exceed 1,410 lines, the largest being 10,104. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.

Evidence
service/history/workflow/mutable_state_impl.go:1 — 10,104 lines (71× median)
service/frontend/workflow_handler.go:1 — 7,876 lines (55× median)
chasm/tree.go:1 — 4,060 lines (28× median)
service/matching/matching_engine.go:1 — 4,001 lines (28× median)
service/history/interfaces/mutable_state_mock.go:1 — 3,922 lines (27× median)

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

strong

No finding.

Product & Engineering Maturity

adequate
04.3

81 direct dependencies in a single manifest

adequate

go.mod declares 81 direct dependencies. Each one is a maintenance obligation, a supply-chain surface and a potential licence question that transfers with the asset. The count says nothing about whether any given dependency was a good choice; it says how many such choices a buyer inherits.

Evidence
go.mod — 81 declared
04.38

40 files still carry code deprecated more than two years ago

adequate

40 files were marked deprecated over two years ago and still are, the oldest since Feb 2022. A deprecation is a promise to remove. Ask what still depends on these, and whether removing them is scheduled.

Evidence
api/persistence/v1/executions.pb.go — deprecated since Feb 2022
api/adminservice/v1/request_response.pb.go — deprecated since Mar 2022
api/history/v1/message.pb.go — deprecated since Jul 2022
api/historyservice/v1/request_response.pb.go — deprecated since Jul 2022
api/persistence/v1/history_tree.pb.go — deprecated since Sep 2022
04.62

Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed

adequate

The newest release, v1.32.0, is not on the branch this survey read; the newest release on it is v1.26.0. The shipped product may differ from what this report describes. Survey the release branch too.

Evidence
tag v1.32.0

Security & Reliability Posture

adequate
05.27

The build runs third-party code it does not pin

adequate

8 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.

Evidence
.github/workflows/claude-review-teams.yml:235 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/features-integration.yml:72 — action pinned by tag
05.20

12 SQL statements built from strings

adequate

12 places in product code build SQL by formatting or joining strings rather than passing parameters. 3 of them put a value into the string; in the rest, what the code shows going in is a table or column name, a constant, or something the line does not show. Ask whether any value reaches these strings, rather than a parameter.

05.26

3 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities

adequate

3 of 221 locked dependencies match 3 published advisories in OSV. A lockfile says which version is installed, not whether the flawed code is reachable from this product, so each needs a look. Most are fixed by an upgrade, and the advisory names the version.

Evidence
go.mod — go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace v1.43.0: GHSA-8wmf-6v46-5gfg (low), fixed in 1.45.0
go.mod — go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracegrpc v1.43.0: GHSA-8wmf-6v46-5gfg (low), fixed in 1.45.0
go.mod — go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk v1.44.0: GHSA-8wmf-6v46-5gfg (low), fixed in 1.45.0
05.45

6 workload settings can give a container the host, behind a chart value or in a stack built from source

adequate

6 places run a container privileged or in the host's namespaces only when a Helm value switches them on, or in a compose file that builds the product from this repository, which is how it is developed rather than how it ships. Neither is on by default in what ships. Ask whether production sets the value or runs that stack.

Evidence
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.cdc.linux.yml:6 — host access behind a setting or in a local stack
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.cdc.linux.yml:10 — host access behind a setting or in a local stack
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.linux.yml:4 — host access behind a setting or in a local stack
05.65

13 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 6 high or critical

adequate

The newest was published on 2026-09-23. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 7 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 1.26.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. GHSA-hmhp-gh8m-c8xp (moderate), GHSA-p2gr-hm8g-q772 (low) are fixed in the surveyed commit; which release carries them cannot be told from this history, which does not place the release users run. Answer lives in: the version you run. The record is incomplete: NVD: 3 records name temporal with nothing tying them to this repository (CVE-2026-42072, CVE-2026-67348, CVE-2026-90004).

Evidence
2026-09-23: CVE-2026-96770 (critical): All published s2s-proxy versions through 0.2.2 are affected. In versions 0.1.16 through 0.2.2, TLS server listeners use Go's RequireAnyClientCert mode when skip
2026-09-21: CVE-2026-16651 (high): temporalio/sqlparser can panic when Parse, ParseStrictDDL, or ParseNext processes a MySQL version comment whose contents are empty or consist only of one to fiv
2026-09-21: CVE-2026-16652 (high): Temporal Server did not bound the work performed while searching for a Schedule's next action time. An authenticated caller with namespace write permission coul
2026-09-21: CVE-2026-65651 (high): temporalio/sqlparser accepts SQL containing deeply nested unary expressions and can return a correspondingly deep abstract syntax tree without enforcing an appl
2026-09-21: CVE-2026-87858 (high): Temporal Server decided whether a Workflow completion callback was internal by reading a caller-supplied HTTP header. An authenticated caller holding only write

Observability & Operations

strong
06.9

No error reporter is wired in

adequate

Nothing in the service initialises an error reporter (Sentry, Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger or an APM agent). An exception in production reaches a person only if someone is reading the logs, which usually means a customer reports it first.

Evidence
no error reporter initialised
06.18

4 of 11 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`

adequate

4 images in the deployment configuration are named without a version or as `latest`. A redeploy can change the software without a commit, a rollback has nothing to roll back to, and nobody can say from the repository what is running.

Evidence
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.yml:86 — image without a version
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.yml:62 — image without a version
develop/docker-compose/docker-compose.yml:72 — image without a version

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.

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The full report on temporalio/temporal: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.

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