Bringing Temporal into your AI editor: How Coinbase debugs Workflows with MCP

Coinbase developed a read-only Temporal MCP server to streamline workflow debugging by allowing engineers to use natural language queries to access detailed information about workflow operations, schedule operations, and infrastructure inspection, without needing to navigate complex interfaces or memorize CLI commands. This server interfaces with Temporal Cloud and self-hosted clusters using the FastMCP Python framework, facilitating tasks such as listing failed workflows or retrieving event histories directly within the editor, thereby eliminating the need to switch between tools. By employing a conversational AI assistant, engineers can seamlessly integrate workflow history data with codebase searches, enabling rapid diagnosis and troubleshooting across teams by correlating event history with the actual code path causing the issue. This innovation has significantly enhanced the efficiency of debugging processes, as demonstrated by over 14,000 calls made to the Temporal MCP server by Coinbase engineers in a few months.