Inngest — Durable AI Workflow Orchestration

Inngest — Reliable AI Workflows

The Problem

AI pipelines are multi-step: extract text → call LLM → save result → send notification. If step 3 fails, you don't want to re-run the expensive LLM call. Traditional queues don't handle this well.

The Solution

Inngest's durable functions persist state after each step. If a step fails, only that step retries — previous steps are not re-executed.

Key Concepts

AI Workflow Example

const aiPipeline = inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "ai-research" },
  { event: "research/start" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    // Step 1: Gather sources (retries independently)
    const sources = await step.run("gather", () =>
      searchWeb(event.data.topic)
    );

    // Step 2: Analyze each source in parallel
    const analyses = await Promise.all(
      sources.map((s, i) =>
        step.run(`analyze-${i}`, () => analyzeSources(s))
      )
    );

    // Step 3: Synthesize with AI
    const report = await step.run("synthesize", () =>
      callClaude(`Synthesize: ${JSON.stringify(analyses)}`)
    );

    // Step 4: Save and notify
    await step.run("save", () => saveReport(report));
    await step.run("notify", () => sendSlack(report.summary));

    return report;
  }
);

SDKs

FAQ

Q: What is Inngest? A: A durable workflow orchestration platform that lets you write reliable step functions with automatic retries and state persistence. Perfect for multi-step AI pipelines.

Q: Is Inngest free? A: The dev server is free and open-source. Inngest Cloud has a free tier for production use.

Q: How is Inngest different from n8n or Temporal? A: Inngest is code-first (not visual like n8n) and simpler than Temporal. You write regular functions with step.run() — no workflow DSL or state machines needed.