Temporal Workflows, Now One Raycast Command Away

We use Temporal every day at Applause Lab. It is how we build reliable, long-running systems without turning every retry, timeout, and recovery path into application glue.

But when you live in Temporal daily, the small operational loops start to add up. You jump between the Temporal UI, the CLI, local namespaces, staging, production, workflow histories, schedules, and a browser tab you probably already lost under five others.

Raycast is already where we open tools, run commands, and move through our work. So we brought Temporal into that flow.

Today we are sharing the Temporal Raycast extension by Applause Lab: a keyboard-first way to search, inspect, and manage Temporal workflows directly from Raycast.

Why We Built It

This started as a workflow improvement for ourselves.

We were spending a lot of time moving between local development, staging, production, the Temporal UI, and the Temporal CLI. None of those tools were the problem. The friction was the switching: finding the right workflow, copying the right ID, checking the right namespace, then repeating the same movement again a few minutes later.

Each tool is useful, but many common operations are small and repetitive:

• Finding a workflow by ID or type
• Checking whether a workflow is running, completed, failed, or cancelled
• Inspecting workflow history
• Looking up activity failures
• Sending a signal
• Querying workflow state
• Cancelling or terminating a workflow
• Triggering or pausing a schedule
• Copying the right CLI command with namespace and workflow IDs included

Since Raycast is already part of our daily command loop, Temporal felt like it belonged there too.

What You Can Do

The extension gives you a faster command loop for the Temporal work you are already doing.

Search Workflows

Search by workflow ID or workflow type as you type. Filter by status, switch namespaces, and quickly return to recently viewed workflows.

The workflow list also auto-refreshes, so it stays useful while you are actively debugging or monitoring an issue.

View Workflow Details

Open a workflow to see useful metadata at a glance:

• Status
• Duration
• Task queue
• Memo fields
• Search attributes
• Parent workflow information

This is useful when you know the workflow you care about and want to quickly answer: “What is this doing right now?”

Inspect Workflow History

Workflow history is one of Temporal’s most important debugging tools, but it can also be dense.

The extension groups activities, timers, and signals so you can more quickly understand what happened. You can inspect activity input, output, failure details, and timing without immediately leaving your keyboard workflow.

Interact With Workflows

For running workflows, you can take common actions directly from Raycast:

• Send a signal with a JSON payload
• Query workflow state
• Cancel a workflow
• Terminate a workflow
• Reset a workflow to a previous state

The extension keeps these actions close to the workflow you are already inspecting, which reduces the chance of copying the wrong ID or namespace.

Copy Temporal CLI Commands

Sometimes the CLI is still the right tool. For those cases, the extension can copy ready-to-run Temporal CLI commands, including the correct namespace and workflow IDs.

You can copy commands for:

• Describing a workflow
• Showing workflow history
• Sending a signal
• Running a query
• Cancelling a workflow
• Terminating a workflow

This is especially useful when moving from investigation to a terminal-based workflow.

Start New Workflows

You can start workflows from Raycast with a custom workflow ID, workflow type, task queue, and input.

The extension remembers recently used workflow types and task queues, which makes repeated local development workflows faster.

Manage Schedules

Temporal schedules are also supported. You can:

• List schedules
• View schedule status and next run time
• Pause and unpause schedules
• Trigger a schedule immediately
• Delete schedules with confirmation

Search Attributes

You can also inspect system and custom search attributes from Raycast, including the attribute type and example query shape.

Work Across Environments

The extension supports multiple Temporal connections.

You can configure local, staging, production, self-hosted, or Temporal Cloud environments, then switch between them from Raycast.

On first launch, it creates a default local connection pointing to localhost:7233, so it works out of the box with a local Temporal development server.

Who It’s For

This extension is for teams using Temporal often enough that the small context switches have become noticeable.

It should be useful for:

• Backend engineers debugging workflows
• Platform engineers supporting Temporal deployments
• SREs investigating workflow failures
• Developers running Temporal locally
• Teams using multiple namespaces or environments
• Anyone who prefers keyboard-first tooling

Getting Started

You need:

• Raycast for macOS
• A running Temporal server, either local, self-hosted, or Temporal Cloud

Install the extension from the Raycast Store: raycast.com/applauselab/temporal

On first launch, use the Manage Connections command to add or edit your Temporal connection.

For local development, the default connection points to localhost:7233.

If you use the Temporal Web UI, you can also configure a Web UI URL so workflows can be opened in the browser when needed.

Built By Applause Lab

At Applause Lab, we build developer tools and AI-powered systems for teams working with complex software. Temporal is part of that work, and this extension came from wanting our own Temporal loop to feel less scattered.

It is not meant to replace the Temporal UI or CLI. It is meant to keep the everyday checks, jumps, and actions close to the keyboard when you are already deep in a workflow.

We would love feedback from Temporal users. Install the extension, try it with your local or cloud Temporal environment, and let us know what would make it more useful.

Install Temporal for Raycast: raycast.com/applauselab/temporal