Skipper: Building Airbnb’s embedded workflow engine

Short summary

Airbnb built Skipper, an embedded workflow engine enabling durable, multi-step business processes without external orchestration overhead. It eliminates the complexity of separate orchestration clusters by embedding directly into services with clean Java/Kotlin APIs. The engine now powers critical workflows across insurance, payments, media processing, and infrastructure at Airbnb.

• •Embedded workflow engine eliminates external orchestration dependencies
• •Solves durable execution with clean, annotation-based Java/Kotlin API
• •Powers critical workflows across insurance, payments, and media at Airbnb

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