Theo vs Inngest
Inngest is a great durable workflow engine. Theo is an agent runtime — workflows are one piece of what an agent needs.
Different shape, overlapping primitives.
TL;DR
Pick Inngest
You need durable workflows as the central primitive — long-running orchestration, retries, fan-out — across many use cases (not only AI agents).
Pick Theo
You are building AI agents and want memory, RAG, and per-agent observability bundled with the runtime, not assembled from pieces.
You can call Inngest from inside TheoKit if your workflow shape needs more than Theo offers today. Most agents do not.
Comparison matrix
| Capability | Capability | Theo | Inngest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durable workflows with step retries | — | Partial (shipping) | yes (mature) |
| Agent memory tiered (user/session/agent) | — | yes (Theo Memory) | no (BYO) |
| RAG built in | — | yes (Theo Knowledge) | no (BYO) |
| Per-agent observability (LLM spans, cost) | — | yes (shipping) | no (workflow steps only) |
| Multi-LLM provider switching at runtime | — | yes | no (BYO) |
| Cron / event-driven triggers | — | yes | yes |
| Step-level retry / replay | — | Partial | yes (first-class) |
| Visual workflow inspector | — | no | yes |
When to pick Inngest
Durable workflow is the product
Your workload is fundamentally workflow-shaped (multi-step, durable, retriable) — not agent-shaped.
Non-agent use cases too
Inngest serves any background job pattern, not just AI agents.
Step retry / replay maturity matters
Inngest has years of production tuning on retry semantics, dead-letter handling, and observability of step state.
When to pick Theo
You ship agents, not workflows
Most agents do not need durable workflow primitives. They need memory, RAG, observability, and a place to live.
Single runtime instead of two
Inngest + observability tool + memory layer + vector DB = four vendors. TheoCloud bundles them.
TypeScript framework included
Theo ships TheoKit (full-stack framework) — Inngest is BYO framework.
FAQ
Can I use Inngest with Theo?
Yes. TheoKit can call Inngest workflows from agent steps. They compose.
What does Inngest do better?
Durable workflow primitives, step retry semantics, visual workflow inspector. It is a category leader in workflows.
When will Theo match Inngest on workflows?
Durable workflow primitives are shipping. We will not match Inngest depth on day one — and that is OK, agents need other things first.
Try them
npx create-theokit my-appStart npm install inngestVisit