effectmq

A typed, Redis-backed task queue for Effect 4. Define work with schemas, run handlers as Effects, and keep payloads, results, and failures typed from producer to worker.

Website · Documentation · Getting started · API reference · npm

effectmq is for background jobs that need durable Redis state without becoming a workflow engine: send an email, resize an image, refresh a cache, or materialize a scheduled report. It provides:

• schema-checked payloads, successes, and failures;
• at-least-once delivery with fenced attempts and stalled-worker recovery;
• Effect Schedule retries, delayed offers, deduplication, and durable cron;
• bounded local worker concurrency, graceful draining, and maintenance;
• typed lifecycle streams plus wait and execute for durable results.

Install

pnpm add @effectmq/core@0.3.0-rc.0 effect@4.0.0-beta.107 @effect/platform-node@4.0.0-beta.107

Important

effectmq currently targets the Effect 4 beta and is not compatible with the stable Effect 3 release. Pin the versions shown above. Node.js 22.19 or newer is required; CI verifies Node.js 22 and 24.

The package includes its pooled NodeRedisPool implementation. @effect/platform-node is only needed by these examples for NodeRuntime.

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Quick start

Define a task, enqueue work, process it. The whole loop:

import { Effect, Schema } from "effect";
import { NodeRuntime } from "@effect/platform-node";
import { Task, TaskEngine, TaskQueue } from "@effectmq/core";

const SendEmail = Task.make({
  name: "send-email",
  payload: { to: Schema.String, subject: Schema.String },
  success: Schema.String,
  error: Schema.Never,
});

const emails = TaskQueue.make("emails", SendEmail);

const program = Effect.gen(function* () {
  yield* TaskQueue.offer(emails, { to: "ada@example.com", subject: "Welcome" });

  yield* TaskQueue.complete(emails, (task) =>
    Effect.succeed(`provider:${task.payload.to}`),
  );
});

// The engine + its Redis layer: the only wiring you need to run the above.
const AppLayer = TaskEngine.layer({
  redis: { url: "redis://localhost:6379" },
});

program.pipe(Effect.provide(AppLayer), NodeRuntime.runMain);

That is the complete producer-to-worker loop. For a clean-room walkthrough with Redis startup and expected output, follow the getting-started tutorial.

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Runtime setup

TaskEngine.layer() is the complete Node live graph: it provides the engine, cryptographic identity generation, and the retained Redis pool, role, and health services:

import { TaskEngine } from "@effectmq/core";

const AppLayer = TaskEngine.layer({
  redis: { url: "redis://localhost:6379" },
});

Use TaskEngine.layerNoDeps() when composing a custom RedisPool implementation. NodeRedisPool.layer() remains available independently and accepts node-redis client options. It establishes separate producer, worker, and maintenance pools when the Layer starts. It supports standalone Redis and Sentinel; Redis Cluster fails startup because queue transitions use multi-key atomic scripts. See the operations runbook for TLS, ACL, bounded-pool, persistence, failover, health, and shutdown guidance.

The tested platform matrix is in the support policy, and reproducible throughput/tail-latency results are published as performance evidence.

TaskEngine is the machinery underneath: atomic Lua scripts, leases, and the lists tasks move between. Provide its layer once; application code normally lives in TaskQueue, Worker, and Scheduler.

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Define a task

A task is a schema, not a function. You declare what goes in (payload), what a success looks like, and what a failure looks like. The idempotencyKey decides what "the same task" means: offer the same key twice and you get one task, not two.

A tagged error makes failures pattern-matchable downstream, so reach for Schema.TaggedError rather than a bare struct.

import { Effect, Schedule, Schema, Stream } from "effect";
import { Task, TaskQueue, type TaskHandler, Worker } from "@effectmq/core";

class EmailRejected extends Schema.TaggedError<EmailRejected>()(
  "EmailRejected",
  { reason: Schema.String },
) {}

const SendEmail = Task.make({
  name: "send-email",
  payload: { to: Schema.String, subject: Schema.String },
  success: Schema.String,
  error: EmailRejected,
  idempotencyKey: (p) => `email:${p.to}:${p.subject}`,
  retry: Schedule.exponential("1 second"),
});

const emails = TaskQueue.make("emails", SendEmail);

const sendViaProvider = (payload: { readonly to: string }) =>
  Effect.succeed(`provider:${payload.to}`);

Offer work, then do it

offer enqueues a payload. complete takes the next task, runs your handler, reports the outcome back to the engine, and returns the task's id (a failing handler is routed per the queue's failure policy). The task your handler receives is fully decoded: task.payload is the real object, not a JSON string.

const offerAndCompleteProgram = Effect.gen(function* () {
  yield* TaskQueue.offer(emails, {
    to: "ada@example.com",
    subject: "Welcome",
  });

  // Take one task, run it, report the outcome. Resolves with the task id.
  const taskId = yield* TaskQueue.complete(emails, (task) =>
    Effect.gen(function* () {
      const id = yield* sendViaProvider(task.payload); // your code
      return id; // matches successSchema
      // ...or `yield* new EmailRejected({ reason })` to fail with the typed error
    }),
  );
  // Success resolves per onSuccessPolicy; a failing handler is routed per onFailurePolicy.
});

One complete processes one task. To process many, set your workers up accordingly.

Predefine the handler

Handlers are functions and workers are Effects, so both are values you can name once and reuse. Type a handler with TaskHandler to declare it next to the task definition before any queue exists. Bind it with complete for one task, or use the managed Worker shown below for a long-running process:

// Declared against the task definition — no queue in sight yet.
const handleSendEmail: TaskHandler<
  typeof SendEmail.payloadSchema,
  typeof SendEmail.successSchema,
  typeof SendEmail.errorSchema
> = (task) => sendViaProvider(task.payload);

// Bound to a queue: an Effect that takes one task and runs it to completion.
const sendEmailWorker = TaskQueue.complete(emails, handleSendEmail);

const repeatedWorkerProgram = Effect.gen(function* () {
  yield* sendEmailWorker; // process one task...
  yield* sendEmailWorker.pipe(Effect.repeat(Schedule.forever)); // ...or loop forever
});

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Streaming & events

The engine publishes a lifecycle event to a per-queue Redis Stream every time a task changes state. TaskQueue.stream hands you those events as an Effect Stream, decoded against your queue's schemas: task.created and task.updated carry fully-typed tasks, task.failed carries your typed error or a built-in stalled/canceled error, task.completed carries your typed success value, and task.moved reports the list transition.

const watch = TaskQueue.stream(emails).pipe(
  Stream.runForEach((event) => Effect.log(event._tag, event.taskId)),
);

Because it's just a stream of terminal events, you can also wait on a specific task. wait blocks until a task id reaches a terminal state, resolving with its success value or failing with its typed error. execute is the offer-and-wait shortcut: enqueue a payload and get its outcome back in one call.

// Offer + await the result in one call.
const executeMessage = TaskQueue.execute(emails, {
  to: "ada@example.com",
  subject: "Welcome",
}); // resolves with the success value, or fails with EmailRejected

// Or await a task you already offered.
const offerAndWait = Effect.gen(function* () {
  const task = yield* TaskQueue.offer(emails, {
    to: "grace@example.com",
    subject: "Welcome",
  });
  return yield* TaskQueue.wait(emails, task.handle);
});

wait reads durable state, subscribes from the handle's authoritative Redis cursor, and rechecks state after subscription, so completion before or during subscription is observed. Streams use a blocking Redis read (default two-second block); persist a retained cursor when building a resumable event consumer.

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Run a worker

complete processes exactly one task. For a long-running process, Worker provides bounded local concurrency, lease supervision, maintenance, and graceful draining:

const worker = Worker.make(emails, handleSendEmail, { concurrency: 5 });
const program = Worker.run(worker);

concurrency is local to one worker process (valid values: 1–1000). Run more processes to fan out. Distributed/global concurrency and rate limits require external coordination; effectmq does not pretend a process-local semaphore can enforce them. The queue fences each attempt, but handlers remain at-least-once, so make external side effects idempotent.

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"But Effect already has Workflow"

It does, and it's excellent, for a different problem. Effect Workflow is durable execution: long-running, multi-step sagas that survive process death, resume exactly where they left off, and persist every intermediate step so the whole history can be replayed. It leans on clustering and sharding; nodes have to be live and coordinated; the durability is total because the use case demands it.

That power has a price that sometimes isn't worth paying. Sometimes you don't have a saga. You have a job. "Send this email." "Resize that image." "Spawn 5 AI agents to complete these tasks." There's no multi-step history worth replaying; there's a payload, a handler, and an outcome. Reaching for durable execution there is like renting a shipping container to mail a letter.

effectmq works whether you have a single worker running in a separate fiber or a hundred distributed across multiple processes.

So:

If Workflow is Temporal (durable, replayable, cluster-coordinated orchestration) then this is BullMQ: a queue. You put work in, workers take attempts, and Redis keeps unfinished work recoverable across retries and worker loss. No workflow replay log or shard map—just a queue with Effect's types and primitives.

Pick durable execution when the process is the thing you can't afford to lose. Pick a queue when the work is.

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Scheduling

For recurring work, Scheduler.make durably materializes an ordinary queue task for each selected cron tick. The task id is derived from the schedule name and nominal tick time, so competing schedulers and crash recovery can safely re-offer it. A managed worker executes the task with the queue's normal leases, retries, and at-least-once delivery semantics.

import { Cron, Effect, Schema } from "effect";
import { Scheduler, Task, TaskQueue, Worker } from "@effectmq/core";

const reportTask = Task.make({
  name: "nightly-report-task",
  payload: { scheduledAt: Schema.String },
  success: Schema.Void,
  error: Schema.String,
});
const reportQueue = TaskQueue.make("nightly-reports", reportTask);
const schedule = Scheduler.make({
  name: "nightly-report",
  cron: Cron.parseUnsafe("0 2 * * *", "UTC"),
  queue: reportQueue,
  payload: (tick) => ({ scheduledAt: tick.scheduledAt.toISOString() }),
  missed: { _tag: "coalesce" },
});
const worker = Worker.make(reportQueue, ({ payload }) =>
  Effect.log(`Building report for ${payload.scheduledAt}`),
);

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Notes

• Completion policies. offer accepts onSuccessPolicy and onFailurePolicy, each one of delete | keep | mark-as-success | mark-as-failure. They decide where a finished task lands: gone, quietly retained, or parked on the success/failed list for inspection. Defaults are delete.
• Retries. Declare retry on the task definition (Task.make) as an Effect Schedule — or a { while, until, times, schedule } options object. On failure the next run time is computed from the schedule and the task lands on the scheduled list until then; when the schedule is exhausted, the failure policy applies. The task-level maxRetries cap defaults to 5; pass null there for an intentionally unbounded cap. An offer may override the cap with a finite non-negative number. Built-in canceled or stalled failures are not retried by the handler schedule.
• Idempotency. The idempotencyKey is the task id. By default, offering the same key returns the existing generation unchanged; replacement requires explicit new-generation mode.
• Delays. offer(..., { delay }) schedules the task for the future; it sits on the scheduled list until its time comes.
• The engine. TaskEngine is the low-level, Lua-backed layer all of this sits on. You provide its layer; you rarely call it directly.

Go deeper

If you need to…	Read…
learn the library from a running example	Getting started
process, schedule, retry, or await tasks	How-to guides
look up exact API behavior	API reference
understand delivery and task identity	Delivery guarantees · Idempotent offers
operate Redis and plan upgrades	Operations · Upgrade and rollback
inspect architecture and storage contracts	Architecture · Runtime boundaries · Storage protocol v1
evaluate support and performance	Support policy · Performance evidence · Soak evidence
release the package	Release process · Current release record

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License

MIT.