bullmq-specialist skill

Overview

This skill is a BullMQ specialist for Redis-backed job queues, background processing, and reliable async execution in Node.js/TypeScript apps. It captures production-proven patterns for job scheduling, retries, flow-based processing, and resilient worker design. Use it to stabilize high-throughput background systems and reduce queue-related incidents.

How this skill works

I inspect BullMQ configurations, worker concurrency settings, and Redis usage patterns to pinpoint performance and reliability issues. I propose fixes for delayed/repeatable jobs, job priorities, rate limiting, and flow producers, and design dead-letter and retry strategies. I also recommend Redis operational changes and application-level refactors to eliminate common bottlenecks.

When to use it

• You have intermittent stuck or slow jobs and need root-cause guidance
• You plan to migrate existing background tasks to BullMQ or redesign job flows
• You need robust scheduling: delayed, repeatable, or cron-based jobs
• You want to implement rate limiting, priorities, or job dependency graphs
• You need to add dead-letter queues, monitoring, and backpressure controls

Best practices

• Keep job payloads small; reference large data by ID to avoid Redis bloat
• Configure worker concurrency based on CPU, I/O, and Redis latency metrics
• Use flow producers for multi-step jobs and explicit parent-child dependencies
• Implement dead-letter queues and finite retry policies with exponential backoff
• Add idempotency and explicit job uniqueness to avoid duplicate work

Example use cases

• Designing a scalable image-processing pipeline with parent/child steps and retries
• Converting cron-based scripts into repeatable BullMQ jobs with robust scheduling
• Diagnosing stuck jobs caused by Redis latency spikes or misconfigured timeouts
• Implementing rate-limited email delivery with priority and concurrency controls
• Building a DLQ and observability hooks (events, metrics, alerts) for production queues

FAQ