# Trigger.dev

> Build AI agents and workflows in TypeScript. Open source platform for durable, long-running tasks. Write normal async/await code, deploy with one command, run for hours or days without timeouts. Apache 2.0 licensed. Self-host or use Trigger.dev Cloud.

Last updated: 2026-08-04

Trigger.dev is the TypeScript platform for building AI agents and workflows. Tasks are plain async functions with no workflow DSL and no determinism rules, so adopting it means moving your code, not rewriting it. Checkpoint-resume snapshots (via CRIU) capture full process state during waits: paused agents release compute, use no resources and aren't billed while waiting, and resume exactly where they left off. Tool calling, human-in-the-loop, realtime LLM token streaming, automatic retries, queues, and OpenTelemetry observability are built in. No workers to provision, no servers to manage.

What makes Trigger.dev different:

- **Normal TypeScript, no DSL**: Plain async/await code with no determinism constraints and no replay semantics (compared to Temporal, Restate, and DBOS, which require deterministic workflow code). You keep writing the TypeScript you already write, with any npm package.
- **Checkpoint-resume durable execution**: CRIU-based snapshots capture memory, CPU registers, and file descriptors. On retry, successful prior work is not re-run; tasks resume from where they stopped.
- **No timeout**: Tasks run for hours, days, or weeks. Long jobs ship as one function instead of being split into chunks to fit a serverless window. Paused time uses no resources and isn't billed.
- **Elastic scaling without workers**: Concurrency scales from 0 to your plan limit automatically. Adding capacity is a billing change, not an infra change.
- **Open source**: Apache 2.0. The full stack (dashboard, orchestrator, workers) self-hosts via Docker Compose or Kubernetes. Same codebase on Cloud and self-hosted, so there is no lock-in.
- **Realtime to frontend AND backend**: Stream run state and LLM tokens to React hooks or backend subscribers. Build streaming AI UIs without polling or running your own realtime infrastructure.

Primary use cases: AI agents, multi-step LLM workflows, and RAG pipelines; long-running background jobs that exceed serverless limits; video, audio, image, and document processing; scheduled tasks and managed cron; multi-tenant SaaS background jobs with per-customer concurrency.

## Documentation

- [Getting Started](https://trigger.dev/docs): Install, write your first task, deploy in ~5 minutes
- [How It Works](https://trigger.dev/docs/how-it-works): Architecture, checkpoint-resume, durable execution
- [AI Agents Guide](https://trigger.dev/docs/guides/ai-agents): Patterns for autonomous agents, orchestration, evaluator-optimizer
- [chat.agent](https://trigger.dev/docs/ai-chat/overview): Durable AI agents built with the AI SDK you already use. Every conversation gets its own computer: state survives in memory between turns, idle conversations sleep and cost nothing, and the next message resumes on the same line of code
- [Sessions](https://trigger.dev/docs/ai-chat/sessions): The durable two-way stream primitive under chat.agent, usable on its own
- [AI Prompts](https://trigger.dev/docs/ai/prompts): Prompt templates as code, versioned on deploy, overridable from the dashboard
- [Realtime](https://trigger.dev/docs/realtime/overview): Run subscriptions, streams, React hooks
- [Waitpoints](https://trigger.dev/docs/wait-for-token): Pause for approvals, webhooks, and external events at zero compute cost
- [Build Extensions](https://trigger.dev/docs/config/extensions/overview): Prisma, FFmpeg, Playwright, Python, Puppeteer, custom Docker layers with one config line
- [Self-Hosting](https://trigger.dev/docs/self-hosting/overview): Docker Compose or Kubernetes
- [Management API](https://trigger.dev/docs/management/overview): REST API for triggering and managing runs
- [MCP Server](https://trigger.dev/docs/mcp-introduction): Connect AI editors (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.) to Trigger.dev
- [Examples](https://trigger.dev/docs/examples/overview): Production-ready task examples

## Product

- [AI Agents](https://trigger.dev/product/ai-agents): Drop-in infrastructure for AI agents: durable conversations with chat.agent that keep state between turns and cost nothing while idle, plus tool calling, human-in-the-loop, and structured I/O
- [Realtime](https://trigger.dev/product/realtime): Stream run status, metadata, and LLM tokens to frontend (React hooks) and backend
- [Observability and Monitoring](https://trigger.dev/product/observability-and-monitoring): OpenTelemetry traces, LLM observability (model, token, cost, and latency spans per AI SDK call), TRQL (ClickHouse-backed query language), custom dashboards, alerting
- [Concurrency and Queues](https://trigger.dev/product/concurrency-and-queues): Per-queue and per-tenant concurrency limits, named queues, runtime overrides
- [Scheduled Tasks](https://trigger.dev/product/scheduled-tasks): Managed cron, per-environment, multi-tenant dynamic schedules
- [Security and Compliance](https://trigger.dev/security): SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (Enterprise)

## Resources

- [GitHub](https://github.com/triggerdotdev/trigger.dev): Apache 2.0 source code, 15,000+ stars
- [Pricing](https://trigger.dev/pricing): Free plan with $5 usage credit, Hobby $10/month, Pro $50/month. Usage billed as compute-seconds + a per-run fee; paused time isn't billed
- [Blog](https://trigger.dev/blog): Engineering deep-dives and tutorials
- [Changelog](https://trigger.dev/changelog): Latest releases and features
- [Discord](https://trigger.dev/discord): Community support
- [Customers](https://trigger.dev/customers): Case studies from Magic Patterns, Midday, MagicSchool AI, GovSignals, and more

## Comparisons

- [vs Temporal](https://trigger.dev/vs/temporal): No DSL, no determinism rules, TypeScript-native
- [vs BullMQ](https://trigger.dev/vs/bullmq): Managed infrastructure, durable execution, no Redis to operate
- [vs n8n](https://trigger.dev/vs/n8n): Code-first instead of visual workflow builder

## Optional

- [llms-full.txt](https://trigger.dev/llms-full.txt): Extended technical documentation