Head to head · Hitl ask · October 2026 research run
Big Arrow vs Inngest
Big Arrow scores 70.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Inngest's 66 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Inngest leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do hitl ask.
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Which one, for what
Big Arrow BB
Best for An agent on a person's Mac that reaches a step only the person may do, such as a permission prompt, 2FA code or payment, and needs to show where.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 75 against 57
- Security & auth, 67 against 60
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 59 against 52
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
First commit 8 October 2026 and version 0.4.6, with flags removed or renamed between minor versions
Inngest B
Best for A TypeScript, Python or Go team that already runs agent steps as durable functions and wants a cheap, long wait for a human answer.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 78
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 70
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email, so the human side is your code
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Big Arrow | Inngest | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 75 | 57 | Big Arrow +18 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 78 | 89 | Inngest +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 77 | 76 | Big Arrow +1 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 67 | 60 | Big Arrow +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 40 | Big Arrow +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 70 | 88 | Inngest +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 59 | 52 | Big Arrow +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | BB 70.7/100 | B 66/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Big Arrow | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | SDK + MCP | Platform |
| Vendor | Franz Enzenhofer | Inngest |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://inn.gs/e/ |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | SSPL with delayed Apache-2.0 (server), Apache-2.0 (SDKs) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-12 | 2026-09-22 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | 747 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Big Arrow
An agent can show a person which control to click, with a labelled arrow that needs no permission to draw, never takes focus and always removes itself. The tool is a week old at version 0.4.6, runs only on macOS, reports no answer beyond how an arrow ended, and has no security policy.
Inngest
Waits are durable and cost nothing while suspended, with runs up to 30 days on Free and 366 on Business. No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email, so the human side is your code.
Before you call either
Big Arrow
- Open the exact System Settings pane or URL first, then point at the one control left for the person
- Write the sign as a full sentence that names the action and, for approvals or payments, what the click does
- Pass
--appor--windowfor any target inside an app, so it is raised and the arrow hides while covered - On exit 4, run
bigarrow doctorand ask the person to grant Accessibility to the app running your shell, not to bigarrow - Call
bigarrow stoponce the step is done, and addbigarrow stop --hookas a Claude Code UserPromptSubmit hook
Inngest
- Use
step.waitForSignal()when one run waits for one answer, andwaitForEventonly when one answer resumes many runs - Register the wait before you send the approval request, or check the external state first, since early events are missed
- Use a unique approval ID per tool call and
matchon it, so parallel approvals resolve independently - Treat
nullorundefinedas a timeout and decide on purpose whether that rejects, approves or escalates - Set an event
idwhen sending the answer, so a retried send is dropped within 24 hours
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Big Arrow or Inngest?
Big Arrow scores 70.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Inngest's 66 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Inngest leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.
Are Big Arrow and Inngest open source?
Big Arrow is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Inngest.
Other comparisons with Big Arrow or Inngest
- gotoHuman vs Inngest
- Hatchet vs Inngest
- Inngest vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks
- Inngest vs Permit MCP Gateway
- Inngest vs Pushary
- Inngest vs Restate
- Inngest vs Temporal
- Inngest vs Trigger.dev
- Inngest vs withHuman
- Big Arrow vs gotoHuman
- Big Arrow vs Hatchet
- Big Arrow vs Pushary
- Big Arrow vs Restate
- Big Arrow vs Temporal
- Big Arrow vs Trigger.dev
- Big Arrow vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/bigarrow-vs-inngest.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/bigarrow.json·/api/v1/tools/inngest.json - From a terminal
anchor compare bigarrow inngest(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "bigarrow", "b": "inngest"}at/mcp, no key