head to head · open source
cadence vs yao-meta-skill
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars, 930 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped yesterday. yao-meta-skill has 2,718 stars, 252 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. cadence leads on adoption by 251% (9,536 vs 2,718 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; yao-meta-skill is written in Python under MIT. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, yao-meta-skill 9%. cadence was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-automation), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cadence | yao-meta-skill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.5K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-08-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 930 | ⑂ 252 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cadence if
- You weight community size — 9.5K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick yao-meta-skill if
- You want the yao-meta-skill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and yao-meta-skill fits your workflow better
About cadence
Cadence Cadence Workflow is an open source platform since 2017 for building and running scalable, fault tolerant, and long running workflows. This repository contains the core orchestration engine and tools including CLI, schema managment, benchmark and canary. Getting Started Cadence backend consists of multiple services, a database (Cassandra/MySQL/PostgreSQL) and optionally Kafka+Elasticsearch. As a user, you need a worker which contains your workflow implementation. Once you have Cadence backend and worker(s) running, you can trigger workflows by using SDKs or via CLI. 1. Start cadence backend components…
read the full cadence overview →
About yao-meta-skill
Yao Meta Skill YAO stands for Yielding AI Outcomes : the goal is not to generate more prompt text, but to produce reusable AI assets and real operational outcomes. yao meta skill creates, evaluates, packages, and governs reusable agent skills. The 1.0 line focused on turning repeated workflows into installable, readable, cross platform skill packages. The 2.0 line expands that factory into a Skill OS: a governed system for modeling a skill once, compiling it for multiple targets, testing its behavior, reviewing its release evidence, and tracking the next iteration. Quick Start · Skill OS 2.0 · 1.0 vs 2.0 ·…
read the full yao-meta-skill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or yao-meta-skill more popular?
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars and yao-meta-skill has 2,718. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and yao-meta-skill free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0 and yao-meta-skill under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cadence and yao-meta-skill?
cadence is written in Go and yao-meta-skill in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cadence or yao-meta-skill?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,536 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose yao-meta-skill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.