infrastructure//Vercel//Inngest

Inngest is a job queue and workflow engine that integrates natively with Vercel. It solves the timeout problem: instead of one long function, the work is defined as a series of steps that Inngest orchestrates.

Inngest is a job queue and workflow engine that integrates natively with Vercel. It solves the timeout problem: instead of one long function, the work is defined as a series of steps that Inngest orchestrates.

Each step runs as a separate Vercel Function invocation, so each one gets its own timeout budget.

Inngest manages the queue: it retries on failure, tracks progress and handles concurrency limits.

Processing a batch of 5,000 Gmail messages in one function would time out. Inngest breaks it into 5,000 small steps, processes them sequentially or in parallel, and retries the failures.

It is event-driven: the app sends an event (user.signed_up, batch.requested), and Inngest triggers the right chain of functions. That makes it more opinionated than Trigger.dev, which solves the same problem of long-running work on serverless with a job queue closer to traditional background jobs and more control over execution.

It runs on the existing serverless infrastructure, with no separate server to manage.