---
title: "Welcome to the Trigger.dev docs"
sidebarTitle: "Introduction"
description: "Find all the resources and guides you need to get started"
mode: "center"
---

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quick start" img="/images/intro-quickstart.jpg" href="/quick-start">
    Get started with Trigger.dev and run your first task in 3 minutes
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Guides, frameworks & examples"
    img="/images/intro-examples.jpg"
    href="/guides/introduction#example-tasks"
  >
    Browse our wide range of guides, frameworks and example projects
  </Card>
  <Card title="MCP Server" img="/images/intro-mcp.jpg" href="/mcp-introduction">
    Learn how to install and configure the Trigger.dev MCP Server
  </Card>
  <Card title="Video walkthrough" img="/images/intro-video.jpg" href="/video-walkthrough">
    Watch an end-to-end demo of Trigger.dev in 10 minutes
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## What is Trigger.dev?

Trigger.dev is an open source background jobs framework that lets you write reliable workflows in plain async code. Run long-running AI tasks, handle complex background jobs, and build AI agents with built-in queuing, automatic retries, and real-time monitoring. No timeouts, elastic scaling, and zero infrastructure management required.

We provide everything you need to build and manage background tasks: a CLI and SDK for writing tasks in your existing codebase, support for both [regular](/tasks/overview) and [scheduled](/tasks/scheduled) tasks, full observability through our dashboard, and a [Realtime API](/realtime) with [React hooks](/realtime/react-hooks#realtime-hooks) for showing task status in your frontend. You can use [Trigger.dev Cloud](https://cloud.trigger.dev) or [self-host](/self-hosting/overview) on your own infrastructure.

## Learn the concepts

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Writing tasks" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/tasks/overview" color="#3B82F6">
    Tasks are the core of Trigger.dev. Learn what they are and how to write them.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Triggering tasks" icon="bullseye-pointer" href="/triggering" color="#fbbf24">
    Learn how to trigger tasks from your codebase.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Runs" icon="person-running" href="/runs" color="#EA189E">
    Runs are the instances of tasks that are executed. Learn how they work.
  </Card>
  <Card title="API keys" icon="key" href="/apikeys" color="#EAEA08">
    API keys are used to authenticate requests to the Trigger.dev API. Learn how to create and use
    them.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Explore by feature

<CardGroup>
  <Card title="Scheduled tasks (cron)" icon="clock" href="/tasks/scheduled" color="#EAEA08">
    Scheduled tasks are a type of task that is scheduled to run at a specific time.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Realtime API" icon="loader" href="/realtime" color="#22C55E">
    The Realtime API allows you to trigger tasks and get the status of runs.
  </Card>
  <Card title="React hooks" icon="react" href="/realtime/react-hooks" color="#3B82F6">
    React hooks are a way to show task status in your frontend.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Waits" icon="calendar-clock" href="/wait" color="#F59E0B">
    Waits are a way to wait for a task to finish before continuing.
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Errors and retries"
    icon="message-exclamation"
    href="/errors-retrying"
    color="#F43F5E"
  >
    Learn how to handle errors and retries.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Concurrency & Queues" icon="line-height" href="/queue-concurrency" color="#D946EF">
    Configure what you want to happen when there is more than one run at a time.
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Wait for token (human-in-the-loop)"
    icon="hand"
    href="/wait-for-token"
    color="#EAEA08"
  >
    Pause runs until a token is completed via an approval workflow.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Build extensions" icon="gear" href="/config/extensions/overview" color="#22C55E">
    Customize the build process or the resulting bundle and container image.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Explore by build extension

| Extension             | What it does                                                 | Docs                                                   |
| :-------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------- |
| prismaExtension       | Use Prisma with Trigger.dev                                  | [Learn more](/config/extensions/prismaExtension)       |
| pythonExtension       | Execute Python scripts in Trigger.dev                        | [Learn more](/config/extensions/pythonExtension)       |
| playwright            | Use Playwright with Trigger.dev                              | [Learn more](/config/extensions/playwright)            |
| puppeteer             | Use Puppeteer with Trigger.dev                               | [Learn more](/config/extensions/puppeteer)             |
| lightpanda            | Use Lightpanda with Trigger.dev                              | [Learn more](/config/extensions/lightpanda)            |
| ffmpeg                | Use FFmpeg with Trigger.dev                                  | [Learn more](/config/extensions/ffmpeg)                |
| aptGet                | Install system packages with aptGet                          | [Learn more](/config/extensions/aptGet)                |
| additionalFiles       | Copy additional files to the build directory                 | [Learn more](/config/extensions/additionalFiles)       |
| additionalPackages    | Include additional packages in the build                     | [Learn more](/config/extensions/additionalPackages)    |
| syncEnvVars           | Automatically sync environment variables to Trigger.dev      | [Learn more](/config/extensions/syncEnvVars)           |
| esbuildPlugin         | Add existing or custom esbuild plugins to your build process | [Learn more](/config/extensions/esbuildPlugin)         |
| emitDecoratorMetadata | Support for the emitDecoratorMetadata TypeScript compiler    | [Learn more](/config/extensions/emitDecoratorMetadata) |
| audioWaveform         | Support for Audio Waveform in your project                   | [Learn more](/config/extensions/audioWaveform)         |

## Explore by example

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card
    title="FFmpeg"
    img="/images/intro-ffmpeg.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/ffmpeg-video-processing"
  />
  <Card
    title="Fal.ai"
    img="/images/intro-fal.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/fal-ai-image-to-cartoon"
  />
  <Card title="Puppeteer" img="/images/intro-puppeteer.jpg" href="/guides/examples/puppeteer" />
  <Card
    title="LibreOffice"
    img="/images/intro-libreoffice.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/libreoffice-pdf-conversion"
  />
  <Card
    title="OpenAI"
    img="/images/intro-openai.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/open-ai-with-retrying"
  />
  <Card
    title="Browserbase"
    img="/images/intro-browserbase.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/scrape-hacker-news"
  />
  <Card
    title="Sentry"
    img="/images/intro-sentry.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/sentry-error-tracking"
  />
  <Card
    title="Resend"
    img="/images/intro-resend.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/resend-email-sequence"
  />
  <Card
    title="Vercel AI SDK"
    img="/images/intro-vercel.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/vercel-ai-sdk"
  />
  <Card
    title="Sharp"
    img="/images/intro-sharp.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/sharp-image-processing"
  />
  <Card
    title="Deepgram"
    img="/images/intro-deepgram.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/deepgram-transcribe-audio"
  />
  <Card
    title="Supabase"
    img="/images/intro-supabase.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/supabase-database-operations"
  />
  <Card
    title="DALL•E"
    img="/images/intro-openai.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/dall-e3-generate-image"
  />
  <Card
    title="Firecrawl"
    img="/images/intro-firecrawl.jpg"
    href="/guides/examples/firecrawl-url-crawl"
  />
  <Card title="Lightpanda" img="/images/intro-lightpanda.jpg" href="/guides/examples/lightpanda" />
</CardGroup>

## Getting help

We'd love to hear from you or give you a hand getting started. Here are some ways to get in touch with us.

<CardGroup>
  <Card
    title="Join our Discord server"
    icon="discord"
    href="https://discord.gg/kA47vcd8P6"
    color="#5865F2"
  >
    Our Discord is the best place to get help with any questions about Trigger.dev.
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Follow us on X (Twitter)"
    icon={
      <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" height="20" viewBox="0 0 512 512">
        <path d="M389.2 48h70.6L305.6 224.2 487 464H345L233.7 318.6 106.5 464H35.8L200.7 275.5 26.8 48H172.4L272.9 180.9 389.2 48zM364.4 421.8h39.1L151.1 88h-42L364.4 421.8z" />
      </svg>
    }
    href="https://twitter.com/triggerdotdev"
    color="#1DA1F2"
  >
    Follow us to get the latest updates and news.
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Schedule a call"
    icon="phone"
    iconType="solid"
    color="#22C55E"
    href="https://cal.com/team/triggerdotdev/founders-call"
  >
    Arrange a call with one of the founders to get help with any questions.
  </Card>
  <Card
    title="Give us a star on GitHub"
    icon="star"
    iconType="solid"
    href="https://github.com/triggerdotdev/trigger.dev"
    color="#fbbf24"
  >
    Check us out our GitHub repo and give us a star if you like what we're doing.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>
