Cadence is a workflow management system. As is Temporal, Apache Beam, Airbnb Airflow, Netflix Conductor, Spotify Luigi, and even things like Github Actions, Google Cloud Workflows, Azure Service Fabric, AWS SWF, Power Automate.
A primary difference is that those are external systems, where you define the flows inside that system - the system then "calling out" to get pieces of the flow done.
Mats is an "internal" system: You code your flows inside the service. It is meant to directly replace synchronously calling out to REST services, instead enabling async messaging but with the added bonus of being as simple as using REST services.
You could call them both workflow management systems. One of the differences is Temporal/Cadence uses code to define workflows instead of YAML. It's a large enough difference that Temporal is defining their category as "durable execution":
Hmm. Maybe not. But they sure have much in common: You define a set of things that should be done, triggered by something - either a schedule, an event (oftentimes a repository event, but it doesn't have to), or from another Github action.
A primary difference is that those are external systems, where you define the flows inside that system - the system then "calling out" to get pieces of the flow done.
Mats is an "internal" system: You code your flows inside the service. It is meant to directly replace synchronously calling out to REST services, instead enabling async messaging but with the added bonus of being as simple as using REST services.
But yes, I see the point.