Inngest vs Trigger.dev

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.

Trigger.dev

Tokens complete from a backend, a pre-signed callback URL or the browser with a token scoped to one waitpoint. 10-minute default timeout on tokens.

Inngest

1. Use step.waitForSignal() when one run waits for one answer, and waitForEvent only when one answer resumes many runs
2. Register the wait before you send the approval request, or check the external state first, since early events are missed
3. Use a unique approval ID per tool call and match on it, so parallel approvals resolve independently
4. Treat null or undefined as a timeout and decide on purpose whether that rejects, approves or escalates
5. Set an event id when sending the answer, so a retried send is dropped within 24 hours

Trigger.dev

1. Pass an explicit timeout to wait.createToken() and handle ok: false as a timeout
2. Use an idempotency key when creating the token so a retried step doesn't send the reviewer a second request
3. Give the browser the publicAccessToken, never the secret key, and don't call token.url from client code
4. Tag tokens with the user or task ID so pending approvals can be listed per reviewer
5. Start the MCP server with --readonly when the agent only needs to inspect runs