Laravel Queues & Jobs

Production-grade queue patterns for Laravel 13 (MySQL + Redis). Contains 20 rules across 6 categories covering driver choice, job design, retry/failure handling, worker scaling, batching/chaining, and testing. Targets the failure modes that pass code review but break under load — silent re-dispatch on retry, models stale on serialisation, missing idempotency on payment jobs, workers leaking memory, and "we forgot ShouldQueue and the request takes 12 seconds in production."

Metadata

• Version: 1.0.0
• Scope: PHP / Laravel 13 + MySQL + Redis (queues), optional Horizon
• Rule Count: 20 rules across 6 categories
• License: MIT

How to Use

When the user asks "design this background job", "audit our queue setup", "why is this job not running", or anything queue-related — work through this skill's rules as a checklist against the relevant files (job classes, config/queue.php, config/horizon.php, supervisor config, the dispatching call sites).

For audit mode, output per-rule verdicts:

• PASS — pattern correctly applied
• FAIL — anti-pattern present (with file:line + fix recommendation)
• N/A — does not apply to this codebase

End with a top-priority fix list (idempotency on payment jobs, missing ShouldQueue, supervisor stopwaitsecs too low — these are the most common production-bite issues).

When to Apply

Reference this skill when:

• Writing a new background job (php artisan make:job)
• Reviewing a PR that adds or modifies a job class
• Setting up queue workers on a new server (Forge / Vapor / bare server)
• Configuring config/queue.php or config/horizon.php
• Debugging a stuck, looping, or repeatedly-failing job
• Choosing between dispatch(), dispatchSync(), dispatchAfterResponse(), Bus::batch(), Bus::chain()
• Adding queue testing (Queue::fake(), Bus::fake())
• Deciding whether to adopt Horizon

Step 1: Detect Queue Setup

Inspect:

File	What to learn
config/queue.php	Default connection (QUEUE_CONNECTION env), failed-jobs storage, after_commit setting
config/horizon.php (if present)	Horizon environments, balance strategy, worker counts, timeouts
app/Jobs/*.php	Job classes, ShouldQueue usage, tries/backoff, failed() methods
app/Console/Kernel.php or routes/console.php	Scheduled jobs (Schedule::job(...), withoutOverlapping)
database/migrations/*_create_failed_jobs_table.php	Failed-jobs storage migration; or DynamoDB driver in config
supervisor*.conf / /etc/supervisor/conf.d/	Worker process management, numprocs, --max-time, stopwaitsecs

Typical setups:

Stack	Queue driver	Failed driver	Worker manager
Small Laravel + MySQL	database	database	Supervisor (or systemd)
Production Laravel + Redis	redis	database (or dynamodb for serverless)	Supervisor + Horizon
Laravel Vapor	sqs	dynamodb	Vapor-managed

Rule Categories by Priority

Priority	Category	Impact	Prefix
1	Driver & Config	CRITICAL	config-
2	Job Design	CRITICAL	design-
3	Retry & Failure	HIGH	retry-
4	Scaling & Workers	HIGH	scaling-
5	Batching & Chaining	HIGH	bus-
6	Testing & Operations	MEDIUM	ops-

Quick Reference

1. Driver & Config (CRITICAL)

• config-driver-choice — database for small apps; redis for production scale; sqs for Laravel Vapor
• config-after-commit — set after_commit: true to prevent dispatching jobs that reference uncommitted DB rows
• config-failed-storage — failed_jobs table is required (or DynamoDB on Vapor); set up retention/cleanup

2. Job Design (CRITICAL)

• design-shouldqueue — every async job MUST implement ShouldQueue (the #1 production bug: forgetting it makes the job run synchronously)
• design-pass-ids-not-models — pass IDs to the constructor; refetch in handle() — avoids stale models and bloated serialised payloads
• design-idempotency — payment, external API, and "create resource" jobs must be safe to run twice (ShouldBeUnique, idempotency keys, unique DB constraints)
• design-constructor-vs-handle — constructor runs at dispatch (sync); handle() runs on the worker. No DB writes or HTTP calls in the constructor.

3. Retry & Failure (HIGH)

• retry-tries-and-backoff — set both: #[Backoff([1, 5, 30])] for exponential delays; default 3 tries is usually too few for transient failures
• retry-failed-method — implement failed(Throwable $e) for permanent-failure handling (alert, refund, mark-as-failed)
• retry-transient-vs-permanent — release($delay) for transient errors (rate-limited, network); throw for permanent
• retry-fail-on-timeout — #[FailOnTimeout] to avoid burning all attempts on hung jobs

4. Scaling & Workers (HIGH)

• scaling-supervisor-config — Supervisor (or systemd) manages workers; stopwaitsecs > timeout; --max-time=3600 to recycle
• scaling-multi-queue-priority — high/default/low queue lanes for SLA-critical jobs; --queue=high,default,low
• scaling-worker-recycling — --max-jobs and --max-time to combat memory leaks in long-running workers

5. Batching & Chaining (HIGH)

• bus-batch-vs-chain — Bus::batch for parallel + progress tracking; Bus::chain for strict sequential
• bus-batch-failure-handling — allowFailures() for fault-tolerant batches; use then/catch/finally callbacks
• bus-chunking-large-sets — for 1000+ items, chunk via Bus::batch(...) rather than one job per item

6. Testing & Operations (MEDIUM)

• ops-queue-fake — Queue::fake() / Bus::fake() in tests; assertDispatched, assertPushed, assertChained, assertBatched
• ops-schedule-queued-jobs — Schedule::job(new X)->everyMinute() queues the job; pair with withoutOverlapping() for safety
• ops-horizon-when — adopt Horizon when on Redis with multiple supervisors; not for database queue or single-worker setups

Essential Patterns

Minimum-viable job class (Laravel 13)

<?php

namespace App\Jobs;

use App\Models\Order;
use Illuminate\Bus\Queueable;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Bus\Dispatchable;
use Illuminate\Queue\Attributes\Backoff;
use Illuminate\Queue\Attributes\FailOnTimeout;
use Illuminate\Queue\InteractsWithQueue;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;
use Throwable;

#[Backoff([1, 5, 30])]
#[FailOnTimeout]
class ChargeOrder implements ShouldQueue
{
    use Dispatchable, InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;

    public int $tries = 5;
    public int $timeout = 30;

    public function __construct(public readonly int $orderId) {}

    public function handle(StripeGateway $stripe): void
    {
        $order = Order::findOrFail($this->orderId);   // refetch — don't trust serialised state
        if ($order->status === 'paid') return;        // idempotency guard

        $charge = $stripe->charge($order);
        $order->markPaid($charge->id);
    }

    public function failed(Throwable $e): void
    {
        Order::find($this->orderId)?->markPaymentFailed($e->getMessage());
    }
}

Dispatching

ChargeOrder::dispatch($order->id);                       // default queue
ChargeOrder::dispatch($order->id)->onQueue('high');      // priority lane
ChargeOrder::dispatch($order->id)->delay(now()->addMinutes(5));
ChargeOrder::dispatchAfterResponse($order->id);          // run after HTTP response sent

Supervisor config (recommended)

[program:laravel-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/app/artisan queue:work redis --queue=high,default,low --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600 --backoff=3
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
user=forge
numprocs=8
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/app/storage/logs/worker.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Critical: stopwaitsecs must be greater than your longest job's timeout, or Supervisor will kill mid-job on deploy.

References

• Laravel 13 — Queues
• Laravel 13 — Horizon
• Laravel 13 — Task Scheduling
• Supervisor — A Process Control System

Full Compiled Document

For the complete guide with all rules expanded: AGENTS.md