Temporal UI

Prerequisites

Temporal must be running in development.

Temporal UI requires Temporal v1.16.0 or later.

Using Temporal CLI

You can install Temporal CLI using Homebrew:

brew install temporal

You can start a Temporal server in development using the following command:

temporal server start-dev

Development

Local Development

Setup

Once you have the prerequisites going, run the following:

pnpm install

Running pnpm install will attempt to download and install the most recent version of Temporal CLI into ./bin/cli/temporal. The development server will attempt to use use this version of this Temporal when starting up.

• If that port is already in use, the UI will fallback to trying to talk to whatever process is running on that port.
• If you do not have a version of Temporal CLI at ./bin/cli/temporal, the development server will look for a version of Temporal CLI in your path.
• For Windows users, you will need to start Temporal using one of the methods listed above until we have sufficiently tested this functionality on Windows. (We would absolutely welcome a pull request.)

git submodule update

This clones the Temporal API Protos into the git submodule, which is required for local development of the UI when running against a local version of the UI server.

To run a local development version of the Svelte application via Vite, run pnpm dev. The application will run on http://localhost:3000 against a local ui-server running along with Temporal server from the temporal-cli.

pnpm dev

Alternatively, you can run pnpm dev:temporal-cli to run against the version of ui-server and Temporal server included temporal-cli.

pnpm dev:temporal-cli

Building the UI

The Temporal UI can be built for local preview. You must set the VITE_TEMPORAL_UI_BUILD_TARGET environment variable in order to build the assets. This will be set for you if you use either of the following pnpm scripts. The resulting assets will be placed in ./dist.

You can preview the built app with pnpm run preview, regardless of whether you installed an adapter. This should not be used to serve your app in production.

pnpm build:local

The Temporal UI can build assets for ui-server. The resulting assets will be placed in ./server/ui/assets.

pnpm build:server

Using Docker

After pulling down the lastest version of Temporal's docker-compose, you can access the UI by visiting http://localhost:8080.

If you want to point the development environment at the docker-compose version of Temporal, you can use the following command:

pnpm dev:docker

pnpm run build:docker
pnpm run preview:docker

Running UI and Temporal Server locally

1. In temporal repo, run Temporal server locally

make start

2. In ui repo, add .env.local-temporal file with the following env variables

VITE_TEMPORAL_PORT="7134"
VITE_API="http://localhost:8081"
VITE_MODE="development"
VITE_TEMPORAL_UI_BUILD_TARGET="local"

3. Run UI with pnpm dev:local-temporal

pnpm dev:local-temporal

4. Create namespace with CLI (Temporal server does not do this automatically unlike CLI)

temporal operator namespace create default

Testing

We use Playwright to interactively test the Temporal UI.

Running the E2E tests

The e2e tests run against the UI with workflows via the TypeScript SDK, a locally built version of the UI Server, a NodeJS/Express Codec Server, and a Temporal dev server via Temporal CLI

pnpm test:e2e

Running the Integration tests

The integration tests run against the UI using Mocks

pnpm test:integration

Both pnpm test:e2e and pnpm test:integration use the playwright.config.ts at the root of the repo. This file will run the UI via the vite development server with the correct configuration by running either pnpm serve:playwright:e2e or pnpm serve:playwright:integration. It will also invoke the default function in tests/globalSetup.ts, which instantiates all of the necessary dependencies (UI Server, Codec Server, Temporal Server, Temporl Workers, etc.) when running in e2e mode.

Configuration

Set these environment variables if you want to change their defaults

Variable	Description	Default	Stage
VITE_API	Temporal HTTP API address. Set to empty `` to use relative paths	http://localhost:8322	Build
VITE_MODE	Build target	development	Build
UI_SERVER_VERBOSE	Enable verbose output to see Air build logs and server output for debugging	false	Development
UI_SERVER_HOT_RELOAD	Enable hot reload using Air	false	Development

Releases

This repository uses an automated release management system that enforces version bump PRs before releases and maintains dual version sync between package.json and server/server/version/version.go.

Release Management

The release system uses custom GitHub Actions for modular, reusable functionality. See GitHub Workflows Documentation for detailed information about the 8 custom actions and 3 workflows.

Release Process:

1. Version Bump: Use Actions → "Version Bump" to create a PR with updated versions
   • Auto mode: Analyzes commits since last tag for semantic versioning
   • Manual mode: Specify major/minor/patch bump type
   • Specific version: Override with exact version (e.g., "2.38.0")
   • Dry run: Preview changes without making modifications
2. Review and Merge: Review the auto-generated version bump PR and merge to main
3. Draft Release: Automatically created when version changes are detected
4. Publish Release: Review and publish the auto-generated draft release
5. UI-server Release: A published release automatically triggers a matching release in the ui-server repository

Version Source of Truth: The Go UIVersion constant in server/server/version/version.go is the authoritative source. All validation uses this as the reference, and package.json must be kept in sync.

Version Validation:

• Run pnpm validate:versions to ensure version files are in sync and ready for release
• Validation compares against last git tag (not last commit) for robust release workflows
• Custom actions provide detailed validation and error messages

Integration:

• Draft releases trigger downstream ui-server releases and Docker image publishing
• UI repo releases (https://github.com/temporalio/ui/releases) contain the latest UI artifacts
• Our npm package will be manually published as needed.
• UI-server repo releases (https://github.com/temporalio/ui-server/releases) manage Docker images