Trigger.dev — Background Jobs for TypeScript Apps

Why Trigger.dev

Background Tasks

export const generateReport = task({
  id: "generate-report",
  run: async (payload: { month: string }) => {
    const data = await queryDatabase(payload.month);    // 30 seconds
    const pdf = await generatePDF(data);                // 2 minutes
    const url = await uploadToS3(pdf);                  // 10 seconds
    await sendEmail({ to: "team@company.com", attachment: url });
    return { url };
  },
});

Scheduling (Cron)

export const dailyCleanup = schedules.task({
  id: "daily-cleanup",
  cron: "0 2 * * *",  // 2 AM daily
  run: async () => {
    await deleteExpiredSessions();
    await cleanupTempFiles();
  },
});

Retries and Error Handling

export const processPayment = task({
  id: "process-payment",
  retry: {
    maxAttempts: 5,
    factor: 2,         // Exponential backoff
    minTimeout: 1000,  // Start at 1s
    maxTimeout: 60000, // Max 60s between retries
  },
  run: async (payload) => {
    // Automatically retries on failure
    await stripeCharge(payload);
  },
});

Observability Dashboard

Real-time dashboard showing:

• Active, completed, failed runs
• Execution timeline
• Logs and errors per run
• Retry history
• Queue depth

Deploy Options

# Self-hosted (Docker)
docker compose up -d

# Trigger.dev Cloud (managed)
npx trigger.dev@latest deploy

Key Stats

• 10,000+ GitHub stars
• Zero infrastructure needed
• Built-in retries, cron, observability
• TypeScript-native
• Self-hosted or cloud

FAQ

Q: What is Trigger.dev? A: An open-source background job framework for TypeScript with retries, scheduling, and observability — no Redis or queue infrastructure needed.

Q: Is Trigger.dev free? A: Open-source and free to self-host. Cloud plan has a free tier.

Q: How is it different from BullMQ? A: BullMQ requires Redis and worker management. Trigger.dev needs zero infrastructure — just TypeScript functions with a built-in dashboard.