Quick Start

Fresh

Get Trigger.dev running in your project in under 5 minutes.

What is Trigger.dev?

Trigger.dev is an open-source platform for background jobs and AI agent workflows. Tasks run with no timeouts, automatic retries, and real-time monitoring.

Step 1: Create an Account

Sign up at cloud.trigger.dev. The onboarding flow creates your first organization and project.

You can also self-host Trigger.dev on your own infrastructure.

Step 2: Initialize Your Project

Run this in your project root:

npx trigger.dev@latest init

This command will:

1. Offer to install the Trigger.dev MCP server for AI assistants
2. Log you into the CLI
3. Ask you to select your project
4. Install the SDK packages
5. Create a /trigger directory with an example task
6. Create trigger.config.ts in your project root

TIP

Install the "Hello World" example task when prompted — you'll use it to test the setup.

Step 3: Start the Dev Server

npx trigger.dev@latest dev

This runs a local server that:

• Watches your /trigger directory for changes
• Communicates with the Trigger.dev platform
• Shows task status and links to run logs in the terminal
• Each task runs in a separate Node process (no blocking)

Step 4: Test a Run

1. Visit the test URL shown in your terminal
2. Select your example task
3. Click "Run test"
4. Watch the run page live-reload with status updates

What's Next?

Next Step	Link
Learn to write tasks	SOP-002: Writing Tasks
Understand triggering	Workflows: AI Agent
Deploy to production	SOP-003: Deploying
CLI reference	Quick Reference: Commands