Show HN: Sidequest.js – Background jobs for Node.js using your database

Nice to know SQLite will be useful. Just be mindful that SQLite does not work well in highly concurrent systems. So, if you have a single job runner process, it will work wonderfully. However, if you have many workers, then you might see a few issues.

Hello! One of the creators of Sidequest here.

Great question!

Sidequest uses transaction-level row locks (`SELECT ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED`) when fetching jobs. This means each worker thread only locks the specific job rows it’s about to process, minimizing lock contention and avoiding blocking other queries. This pattern is inspired by Oban’s advisory-lock approach, but instead of using explicit advisory locks, Sidequest relies on the database’s built-in row locking mechanism.

The only drawback is that Sidequest will require one or two connections to your DB. If you enqueue jobs from within other jobs, then each job that requests an enqueue will also connect to your DB (lazily connected upon request - if your job does not enqueue, no connection is created). However, you can configure the number of concurrent workers per queue and globally, so you control how much load Sidequest puts on your database.

I hope that answers your question :)

Thanks for the question! I just checked out pg-boss. Solid library if you're fully on Postgres. Sidequest.js takes a broader and more flexible approach. Key differences:

Database agnostic: Sidequest isn't tied to Postgres. It also works with MySQL, MongoDB, and SQLite, which helps if your stack isn’t Postgres-based.

Job isolation: Jobs run in worker threads, so heavy tasks won’t block your main Node.js process. Express APIs stay responsive.

Distributed coordination: Designed to run across multiple instances. One node picks up the job, and if it fails, another can retry. This is built-in.

Built-in dashboard: Includes a web UI to inspect, retry, or cancel jobs.

More than queues: Supports cron jobs, uniqueness constraints, per-queue concurrency, and configuration. Some of this overlaps with pg-boss, but the intent behind Sidequest is to provide a complete solution for job processing.

If you just need simple queues in a Postgres-only setup, pg-boss is great. If you want more flexibility, tooling, and backend options, Sidequest may be a better fit.