Skipper: Building Airbnb’s embedded workflow engine
How Airbnb built a lightweight workflow engine to solve durable execution.
By: Ricardo Gamba, Andriy Sergiyenko
Introduction: The durable execution problem
Picture this hypothetical flow: A host submits an insurance claim about their listing to Airbnb. The system needs to validate the claim, run trust and safety checks, assess estimates, process ...
Skipper represents a pragmatic response to a pervasive challenge in distributed systems: ensuring durable execution without the overhead of external orchestration. The embedded model is a deliberate trade-off, prioritizing operational simplicity and independence over centralized control. This approach aligns with a broader industry trend toward decentralized architectures, where services own their workflows rather than relying on shared infrastructure. The design philosophy—succinct ergonomics, ...
