PlainQ Documentation

PlainQ is a small, self-contained queue server written in Go. A single binary gives you a gRPC API, a CLI, a terminal UI, and a built-in admin dashboard (Houston) — backed by embedded SQLite for local and small deployments, or PostgreSQL when you need to scale out.

One binary

Run ./plainq serve and you have a queue. No broker fleet, no external dependencies.

gRPC + CLI + TUI

The same surface, scripted or interactive — with -json everywhere for scripts and agents.

Pick your storage

Embedded SQLite by default (Litestream-friendly), or PostgreSQL for a shared backend.

Auth built in

JWT sessions, refresh tokens, RBAC, and OAuth/OIDC hooks ship with the server.

Start here

Quick startFrom a fresh clone to a message round-trip in about a minute.

InstallationBuild from source, run with Docker, or deploy on Kubernetes.

Core conceptsQueues, messages, visibility timeouts, retries, and dead-letter queues.

CLI guideEvery command and the flags you'll actually use.

Source

PlainQ is open source under the Apache License 2.0. The code, issues, and discussions live on GitHub.