[jeeybee]

If you like the “use Postgres until it breaks” approach, there’s a middle ground between hand-rolling and running Kafka/Redis/Rabbit: PGQueuer.

PGQueuer is a small Python library that turns Postgres into a durable job queue using the same primitives discussed here — `FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED` for safe concurrent dequeue and `LISTEN/NOTIFY` to wake workers without tight polling. It’s for background jobs (not a Kafka replacement), and it shines when your app already depends on Postgres.

Nice-to-haves without extra infra: per-entrypoint concurrency limits, retries/backoff, scheduling (cron-like), graceful shutdown, simple CLI install/migrations. If/when you truly outgrow it, you can move to Kafka with a clearer picture of your needs.

Repo: https://github.com/janbjorge/pgqueuer

Disclosure: I maintain PGQueuer.