Task Queues in FastAPI: Handling Long-Running Operations Like a Senior Engineer

Short summary

Implement Celery + Redis task queues in FastAPI to decouple long-running work (database migrations, file uploads, AI inference calls) from HTTP requests, responding immediately while workers process async. Critical production patterns: use task_acks_late=True to prevent job loss on crashes, implement exponential backoff retries for external API calls like Claude, and centralize task failure logging. Avoid asyncio-only background tasks or custom queue implementations—they lose jobs under production load.

• •Queue long-running work separately from HTTP requests; respond immediately while workers process async
• •Use Celery + Redis with task_acks_late=True to prevent job loss on worker crashes
• •Implement exponential backoff retries for external API calls and centralized failure tracking

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