Trigger.dev — Background Jobs for AI Agents

Trigger.dev for AI Workloads

Why Background Jobs for AI?

Serverless functions have 10-60s time limits. AI workloads often need:

• Agent loops that run for minutes (research, code generation)
• Batch processing of 1000s of documents through LLMs
• Multi-step pipelines with retries on each step
• Scheduled tasks (daily report generation, model retraining)

AI Agent Workflow Example

import { task } from '@trigger.dev/sdk/v3';

export const codingAgent = task({
    id: 'coding-agent',
    maxDuration: 600, // 10 minutes
    run: async ({ issue }: { issue: string }) => {
        // Multi-step agent loop
        let plan = await callLLM(`Plan how to fix: ${issue}`);
        let code = await callLLM(`Write code for: ${plan}`);
        let tests = await runTests(code);

        // Retry loop if tests fail
        for (let i = 0; i < 3 && !tests.passed; i++) {
            code = await callLLM(`Fix failing tests: ${tests.errors}`);
            tests = await runTests(code);
        }

        return { code, testsPassed: tests.passed };
    },
});

Batch Processing

export const batchEmbed = task({
    id: 'batch-embed',
    run: async ({ documents }: { documents: string[] }) => {
        const results = await Promise.all(
            documents.map(doc =>
                callOpenAI(`Generate embedding for: ${doc.slice(0, 1000)}`)
            )
        );
        await saveEmbeddings(results);
        return { processed: documents.length };
    },
});

// Trigger with 10,000 documents
await batchEmbed.trigger({ documents: allDocs });

Scheduled Jobs

import { schedules } from '@trigger.dev/sdk/v3';

export const dailyReport = schedules.task({
    id: 'daily-ai-report',
    cron: '0 9 * * *', // Every day at 9 AM
    run: async () => {
        const metrics = await getYesterdayMetrics();
        const report = await callLLM(`Generate daily AI usage report: ${JSON.stringify(metrics)}`);
        await sendEmail({ to: 'team@company.com', body: report });
    },
});

Built-in Observability

Every task execution is traced:

• Step-by-step execution timeline
• Input/output for each step
• Error details with stack traces
• Duration and retry history
• Cost tracking (if configured)

FAQ

Q: What is Trigger.dev? A: Trigger.dev is an open-source background job framework with 14,300+ GitHub stars for running long-duration AI tasks, multi-step workflows, batch processing, and scheduled jobs with built-in retries and observability.

Q: How is Trigger.dev different from n8n or Temporal? A: Trigger.dev is code-first TypeScript (not visual/YAML). n8n is a visual workflow builder. Temporal is a distributed workflow engine for large teams. Trigger.dev is the simplest path from "I have a TypeScript function" to "it runs reliably in production."

Q: Is Trigger.dev free? A: Yes, open-source under Apache-2.0. Self-host for free. Managed cloud has a free tier.