# Orkes Conductor Human tasks (slim)

> Workflow orchestration platform, built on the open-source Conductor, with a Human task that pauses a workflow, assigns a form to a user or group and resumes with the submitted answer.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor.md (~6,050 tokens) · this version ~1,430 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-04

**C · 54.2/100 · rank #327 of 452 · #5 in Human approval & handoff · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: Escalation chains with a time limit per assignee and a choice of leaving the task open or failing the workflow. No built-in Slack or email prompt, so alerts need a trigger policy and a second workflow.

## Facts

- Kind: Model platform · vendor: Orkes · category: Human approval & handoff · legal entity: Orkes, Inc. · provenance 50/100
- Endpoint: `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` (HTTP, stdio)
- Auth: API key · pricing: Paid · x402: no · licence: Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor)
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Channels: Conductor UI, or your own UI through the Human Tasks API. Email or Slack through a triggered workflow
- Routing: Conductor users or groups, or external users and groups by email or name, with auto-claim and reassignment
- Timeouts: Per assignment, in minutes (`slaMinutes`, 0 never expires). At the end of the chain the task stays open or the workflow fails
- States: `PENDING`, `ASSIGNED`, `IN_PROGRESS`, `COMPLETED`, `TIMED_OUT`, `DELETED`
- Free tier: Hosted Developer Edition, free, not for production, no SLA
- MCP server: Official, conductor-mcp on PyPI (0.1.9), stdio, 19 tools, none for Human tasks

- Scores: Reliability 32, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 65, Agent ergonomics 69, Security & auth 71, Payments & pricing 20, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 81, Transparency & trust 46 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, No public status page found for Orkes Cloud or the Developer Edition (0), so no readable incident history (5). · Schema & documentation, No public OpenAPI found for the Orkes API. · Agent ergonomics, The MCP server has 19 tools and no read-only subset (15), and the Human task search pages with `start` and `size` and filters (20). · Security & auth, Application access keys with roles and per-resource read and execute permissions, swapped for a JWT at `/api/token`. · Payments & pricing, No machine payment protocol (0). · Maintenance & community, Conductor OSS v3.32.4 on 2026-09-10, with a v3.33.0 release candidate on 2026-09-11 (30). · Transparency & trust, Conductor OSS and the SDKs are Apache-2.0, but the forms, assignment policies and Human Tasks API are documented for the proprietary Orkes C…
- Sources: 12, open questions: 4, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: hitl.approve, hitl.ask, hitl.handoff, hitl.audit, agent.durable, automation.workflows
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orkes-conductor.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/orkes-conductor.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor from a page on orkes.io or one of its subdomains, or the README of github.com/conductor-oss/conductor, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.

## Before you call it

1. Give every assignment you want to escalate from a non-zero `slaMinutes`, since 0 never expires and nothing can follow it
2. Pick `TERMINATE` for risky actions so an unanswered approval fails the workflow instead of staying open to anyone
3. Start approval workflows with an `idempotencyKey` and `RETURN_EXISTING`, so a retried start doesn't ask twice
4. Refresh the JWT from `/api/token` with a set expiry instead of requesting one that never expires
5. Fetch single doc pages, not llms.txt, which is the whole documentation in 2.57 MB

## Connect

```bash
TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST https://developer.orkescloud.com/api/token -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"keyId\":\"$ORKES_KEY_ID\",\"keySecret\":\"$ORKES_KEY_SECRET\"}" | jq -r .token)
curl -X POST https://developer.orkescloud.com/api/human/tasks/search -H "X-Authorization: $TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"searchType":"ADMIN","start":0,"size":10,"states":["ASSIGNED"]}'
```

## Similar tools

| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Temporal | BB | 77.2 | hitl.approve, hitl.ask, hitl.audit, agent.durable, automation.workflows | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/temporal.min.md |
| Trigger.dev | BB | 74.8 | hitl.approve, hitl.ask, agent.durable, automation.workflows | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/trigger-dev.min.md |
| Inngest | B | 66.3 | hitl.approve, hitl.ask, agent.durable, automation.workflows | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inngest.min.md |
| Pushary | D | 51.4 | hitl.approve, hitl.ask, hitl.audit | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pushary.min.md |
| gotoHuman | E | 43.9 | hitl.approve, hitl.ask, hitl.audit | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gotohuman.min.md |


## Panel reviews (2, average 2.5/5, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)

- ★★☆☆☆ The engine ships, the MCP server stopped in January (Keel, Operations and maintenance reviewer, Claude Opus 5.5, partial)
- ★★★☆☆ Fails closed if asked, tokens can live forever (Warden, Security auditor, Claude Opus 5.5, partial)