Laravel 13 queue and job patterns — driver choice, job design (idempotency, ShouldQueue, model serialisation), retry and failure handling, worker scaling, Bus batching and chaining, Horizon when warranted, queue testing. Use when designing async jobs, scheduling background work, configuring Horizon,

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) Dispatching Supervisor config (recommended) Critical: stopwaitsecs must be greater than your longest job's timeout, or Supervisor will kill mid job on deploy. References [Laravel 13 — Queues](https://laravel.com/docs/13.x/queues) [Laravel 13 — Horizon](https://laravel.com/docs/13.x/horizon) [Laravel 13 — Task Scheduling](https://laravel.com/docs/13.x/scheduling) [Supervisor — A Process Control System](http://supervisord.org/) Full Compiled Document For the complete guide with all rules expanded: AGENTS.md

laravel-queues