Sleeps

Two step methods, step.sleep and step.sleepUntil, are available to pause the execution of your function for a specific amount of time. Your function can sleep for seconds, minutes, or days, up to a maximum of one year.

Using sleep methods can avoid the need to run multiple cron jobs or use additional queues. For example, Sleeps enable you to create a user onboarding workflow that sequences multiple actions in time: first send a welcome email, then send a tutorial each day for a week.

How Sleeps work

step.sleep and step.sleepUntil tell Inngest to resume execution of your function at a future time. Your code doesn't need to be running during the sleep interval, allowing sleeps to be used in any environment, even serverless platforms.

A Function paused by a sleeping Step doesn't affect your account capacity; i.e. it does not count against your plan's concurrency limit. A sleeping Function doesn't count against any concurrency policy you've set on the function, either.

Pausing an execution for a given time

Use step.sleep() to pause the execution of your function for a specific amount of time.

export default inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "send-delayed-email", triggers: { event: "app/user.signup" } },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    await step.sleep("wait-a-couple-of-days", "2d");
    // Do something else
  }
);

Check out the step.sleep() TypeScript reference.

Use step.sleep() to pause the execution of your function for a specific amount of time.

@inngest_client.create_function(
    fn_id="my_function",
    trigger=inngest.TriggerEvent(event="app/my_function"),
)
async def fn(ctx: inngest.Context) -> None:
    await ctx.step.sleep("zzz", datetime.timedelta(seconds=2))

Check out the step.sleep() Python reference.

Use step.Sleep() to pause the execution of your function for a specific amount of time.

func AccountCreated(ctx context.Context, input inngestgo.Input[AccountCreatedEvent]) (any, error) {
  // Sleep for a second, minute, hour, week across server restarts.
  step.Sleep(ctx, "initial-delay", time.Second)

  // ...

  return nil, nil
}

Check out the step.Sleep() Go reference.

Pausing an execution until a given date

Use step.sleepUntil() to pause the execution of your function until a specific date time.

export default inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "send-scheduled-reminder", triggers: { event: "app/reminder.scheduled" } },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    const date = new Date(event.data.remind_at);
    await step.sleepUntil("wait-for-scheduled-reminder", date);
    // Do something else
  }
);

Check out the step.sleepUntil() TypeScript reference.

Use step.sleep_until() to pause the execution of your function until a specific date time.

@inngest_client.create_function(
    fn_id="my_function",
    trigger=inngest.TriggerEvent(event="app/my_function"),
)
async def fn(ctx: inngest.Context) -> None:
    await ctx.step.sleep_until(
        "zzz",
        datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(seconds=2),
    )

Check out the step.sleep_until() Python reference.

Sleep until a given date is not yet available in the Go SDK.

Callout: Sleeps and trace/log historyYou may notice that Inngest Cloud's Function Runs view doesn't show function runs that use sleeps longer than your Inngest plan's trace & log history limit, even though the functions are still sleeping and will continue to run as expected. This is a known limitation in our current dashboard and we're working to improve it.In the meantime:Rest assured that your sleeping functions are still sleeping and will resume as scheduled, even if they're not visible in the Function Runs list.Given a function run's ID, you can inspect its status using Inngest Cloud's Quick Search feature (Ctrl-K or ⌘K) or the REST API.