💥 activity describe: return full DescribeActivityExecutionResponse

[dandavison]

What changed?

Change temporal activity describe to output the entire DescribeWorkflowExecutionResponse

Why

temporal activity describe printed only the nested ActivityExecutionInfo. This was different from temporal workflow describe, which prints the whole DescribeWorkflowExecutionResponse.

Checklist

Stability
non-GA API

Tests

go test ./internal/temporalcli/ -run 'TestSharedServerSuite/TestActivity_Describe'

Manual tests

Happy path

Setup

./temporal server start-dev \
    --dynamic-config-value 'activity.enableCallbacks=true' \
    --dynamic-config-value 'callback.allowedAddresses=[{"Pattern":"*","AllowInsecure":true}]'

SAA workfload

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script
#
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = ["temporalio"]
# ///
"""
Generate Standalone Activity traffic against a Temporal Cloud (test) namespace, to validate
namespace_open_activities_count. Runs a worker and a client in the same process.


Usage:
  ./saa_traffic.py [num_activities] [sleep_seconds] [run_seconds]
"""

import asyncio
import os
import sys
import uuid
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

from google.protobuf.duration_pb2 import Duration
from temporalio import activity
from temporalio.api.common.v1 import ActivityType, Callback, Link, Payloads
from temporalio.api.taskqueue.v1 import TaskQueue
from temporalio.api.workflowservice.v1 import StartActivityExecutionRequest
from temporalio.client import Client
from temporalio.worker import Worker

TASK_QUEUE = "saa-metrics-test-task-queue"


@activity.defn
def slow_activity(sleep_seconds: int) -> str:
    activity.logger.info(f"sleeping for {sleep_seconds}s")
    import time

    time.sleep(sleep_seconds)
    return "done"


async def main() -> None:
    num_activities = int(sys.argv[1]) if len(sys.argv) > 1 else 5
    sleep_seconds = int(sys.argv[2]) if len(sys.argv) > 2 else 120
    run_seconds = int(sys.argv[3]) if len(sys.argv) > 3 else 240

    address = os.environ.get("TEMPORAL_ADDRESS", "localhost:7233")
    namespace = os.environ.get("TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE", "default")
    api_key = os.environ.get("TEMPORAL_API_KEY")

    client = await Client.connect(
        address,
        namespace=namespace,
        api_key=api_key,
        tls=bool(api_key),
    )

    worker = Worker(
        client,
        task_queue=TASK_QUEUE,
        activities=[slow_activity],
        activity_executor=ThreadPoolExecutor(num_activities),
    )
    worker_task = asyncio.create_task(worker.run())

    callback_url = os.environ.get(
        "TEMPORAL_CALLBACK_URL", "http://localhost/saa-callback"
    )

    handles = []
    for i in range(num_activities):
        activity_id = f"saa-metrics-test-{i}"
        request = StartActivityExecutionRequest(
            namespace=namespace,
            identity=client.identity,
            request_id=str(uuid.uuid4()),
            activity_id=activity_id,
            activity_type=ActivityType(name=slow_activity.__name__),
            task_queue=TaskQueue(name=TASK_QUEUE),
            input=Payloads(
                payloads=await client.data_converter.encode([sleep_seconds])
            ),
            start_to_close_timeout=Duration(seconds=sleep_seconds + 30),
            completion_callbacks=[Callback(nexus=Callback.Nexus(url=callback_url))],
            links=[
                Link(
                    activity=Link.Activity(
                        namespace=namespace,
                        activity_id=f"saa-metrics-test-{max(i - 1, 0)}",
                    )
                )
            ],
        )
        resp = await client.workflow_service.start_activity_execution(request)
        print(f"started {activity_id} run={resp.run_id}")
        handles.append(client.get_activity_handle(activity_id, run_id=resp.run_id))

    async def report_open_count() -> None:
        while True:
            count = await client.count_activities("ExecutionStatus='Running'")
            print(f"[local check] open activities: {count.count}")
            await asyncio.sleep(15)

    report_task = asyncio.create_task(report_open_count())

    await asyncio.sleep(run_seconds)

    report_task.cancel()
    worker_task.cancel()
    for handle in handles:
        try:
            print(f"{handle.id}: {await handle.result()}")
        except Exception as e:
            print(f"{handle.id}: {e}")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

cli(saa-describe) ./temporal activity describe -a saa-metrics-test-1
Activity Execution Info:
  ActivityId            saa-metrics-test-1
  RunId                 019f658a-181d-7f13-8ce2-22c0a7cad85f
  Type                  slow_activity
  Status                Running
  RunState              Scheduled
  TaskQueue             saa-metrics-test-task-queue
  StartToCloseTimeout   5m30s
  Attempt               1
  ScheduleTime          4 minutes ago
  StateTransitionCount  1

Callbacks:
   State   Attempt  RegistrationTime  NextAttemptScheduleTime  BlockedReason  LastAttemptFailure
  Standby        0  4 minutes ago

cli(saa-describe) ./temporal activity describe -a saa-metrics-test-1 -o json
{
  "runId": "019f658a-181d-7f13-8ce2-22c0a7cad85f",
  "info": {
    "activityId": "saa-metrics-test-1",
    "runId": "019f658a-181d-7f13-8ce2-22c0a7cad85f",
    "activityType": {
      "name": "slow_activity"
    },
    "status": "ACTIVITY_EXECUTION_STATUS_RUNNING",
    "runState": "PENDING_ACTIVITY_STATE_SCHEDULED",
    "taskQueue": "saa-metrics-test-task-queue",
    "scheduleToCloseTimeout": "0s",
    "scheduleToStartTimeout": "0s",
    "startToCloseTimeout": "330s",
    "heartbeatTimeout": "0s",
    "retryPolicy": {
      "initialInterval": "1s",
      "backoffCoefficient": 2,
      "maximumInterval": "100s"
    },
    "attempt": 1,
    "scheduleTime": "2026-07-15T11:29:36.798007Z",
    "stateTransitionCount": "1",
    "stateSizeBytes": "845",
    "searchAttributes": {}
  },
  "longPollToken": "CiQwMTlmNjU4Ny01NjRlLTc5YmMtYjc3NS01MGQxYTc5MTcxNTESEnNhYS1tZXRyaWNzLXRlc3QtMRokMDE5ZjY1OGEtMTgxZC03ZjEzLThjZTItMjJjMGE3Y2FkODVmIOKwg7UMKgIQAToCEAE=",
  "callbacks": [
    {
      "trigger": {
        "activityClosed": {}
      },
      "info": {
        "callback": {
          "nexus": {
            "url": "http://localhost/saa-callback"
          }
        },
        "registrationTime": "2026-07-15T11:29:36.798007Z",
        "state": "CALLBACK_STATE_STANDBY"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Error case
I verified that no callback info is emitted when the activity has no callback:

{
  "runId": "019f657b-db53-7b1f-becf-23e972cd3b2a",
  "info": {
    "activityId": "saa-metrics-test-0",
    "runId": "019f657b-db53-7b1f-becf-23e972cd3b2a",
    "activityType": {
      "name": "slow_activity"
    },
    "status": "ACTIVITY_EXECUTION_STATUS_RUNNING",
    "runState": "PENDING_ACTIVITY_STATE_STARTED",
    "taskQueue": "saa-metrics-test-task-queue",
    "scheduleToCloseTimeout": "0s",
    "scheduleToStartTimeout": "0s",
    "startToCloseTimeout": "150s",
    "heartbeatTimeout": "0s",
    "retryPolicy": {
      "initialInterval": "1s",
      "backoffCoefficient": 2,
      "maximumInterval": "100s"
    },
    "lastStartedTime": "2026-07-15T11:14:03.735583Z",
    "attempt": 1,
    "scheduleTime": "2026-07-15T11:14:03.731770Z",
    "lastWorkerIdentity": "[email protected]",
    "stateTransitionCount": "2",
    "searchAttributes": {}
  },
  "longPollToken": "CiQwMTlmNjU3Yi1hN2JiLTdhNDQtODJhNi0xMzMyMWJmNmYyMTMSEnNhYS1tZXRyaWNzLXRlc3QtMBokMDE5ZjY1N2ItZGI1My03YjFmLWJlY2YtMjNlOTcyY2QzYjJhIOKwg7UMKgIQAjoCEAE="
}

The text version doesn't print out the Callbacks: header.