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Cron Jobs & Background Tasks

This document explains all scheduled background jobs and how to manage them.

Overview​

Background jobs are powered by Inngest. This provides:

  • ✅ Automatic retries with exponential backoff
  • ✅ Job scheduling (cron)
  • ✅ Dashboard for monitoring
  • ✅ Zero-downtime deployments

Available Jobs​

1. Audit Log Cleanup​

Schedule: Daily at 3:00 AM UTC (0 3 * * *)

Deletes audit logs older than 90 days to prevent unbounded database growth.

File: src/lib/inngest/audit-cleanup.ts

Behavior:

  • Deletes from audit_logs table
  • Deletes from system_logs table
  • Logs cleanup result to system_logs

2. Webhook Retry​

Trigger: Event-driven (webhook/send)

Sends outgoing webhooks with automatic retry (max 3 attempts).

File: src/lib/inngest/webhook-retry.ts

Behavior:

  • Fetches webhook config from database
  • Sends HTTP POST with signature
  • Logs success/failure in webhook_deliveries
  • Retries on failure with exponential backoff

3. Email Queue​

Trigger: Event-driven (email/send, email/send-batch)

Sends emails asynchronously via Resend.

File: src/lib/inngest/email-queue.ts

Behavior:

  • Single email: inngest.send({ name: "email/send", data: { to, subject, html } })
  • Batch email: processes in batches of 10

Development​

Run the Inngest dev server locally:

npx inngest-cli@latest dev

Visit http://localhost:8288 to:

  • View registered functions
  • Trigger test events
  • Monitor job execution
  • Inspect logs

Production Setup​

Vercel Deployment​

  1. Add Inngest environment variables:

    INNGEST_SIGNING_KEY="..."
    INNGEST_EVENT_KEY="..."

  2. Inngest auto-discovers functions via /api/inngest endpoint.

Manual Cron (Alternative)​

If not using Inngest, you can trigger cleanup via HTTP:

curl -X POST https://your-app.com/api/cron/cleanup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRON_SECRET"

Environment Variables​

VariableRequiredDescription
INNGEST_SIGNING_KEYYes (prod)Signing key from Inngest dashboard
INNGEST_EVENT_KEYYes (prod)Event key for sending events
CRON_SECRETYesSecret for manual cron endpoints

Monitoring​

In production, jobs are monitored via:

  • Inngest Dashboard: Real-time job status
  • Sentry: Error tracking (auto-integrated)
  • System Logs: system_logs table in database