Does Temporal Workflow Streams replace a durable session layer?

What this post added

This post analyzes Temporal Workflow Streams, comparing its capabilities to a durable session layer. It details how Workflow Streams provides exactly-once, ordered delivery via long-polling updates and handles Workflow restarts (Continue-As-New) by snapshotting stream logs. It explicitly states that Workflow Streams does not replace a durable session layer because it is one-way, uses long-polling instead of persistent connections, and does not support multi-participant visibility or offline delivery. The post concludes by reiterating the necessity of a durable session layer for features like realtime push, bidirectional communication, multi-participant visibility, offline delivery, conversation branching, and human handover, positioning Ably AI Transport as an implementation of such a layer.