messenger-retry-failures_skill

Overview

This skill implements resilient Symfony Messenger async workflows focused on idempotency, retries, and operational visibility. It provides a practical execution posture for handling retry failures and stabilizing failure transports. Use it to codify retry policies, failure routing, and evidence for operational validation.

How this skill works

The skill inspects and updates Messenger configuration, handler implementations, and retry/failure transport settings to enforce at-least-once delivery assumptions. It guides creation of idempotent handlers, deterministic routing strategies, and clear poison-message handling. The skill outputs updated async config, documented retry/failure policy decisions, and operational validation artifacts (logs, replay tests, metrics).

When to use it

• When building or stabilizing asynchronous workflows with Symfony Messenger and Scheduler
• When delivery retries are causing duplicate side effects or unexpected failures
• When you need clear failure transport and poison-message handling policies
• During production readiness reviews where operational visibility and evidence are required
• When implementing or validating idempotency across async handlers

Best practices

• Design handlers for idempotency and deterministic behavior under at-least-once delivery
• Configure retry/backoff and a dedicated failure transport rather than silent drops
• Surface poison-message strategies early: quarantining, alerting, and replay policies
• Validate replay and failure scenarios with tests and operational runbooks
• Emit structured logs and metrics for retries, failures, and replay attempts

Example use cases

• Stabilize a job processing pipeline where retries cause duplicate database writes
• Implement a failure transport that quarantines messages for manual triage
• Add replay tests and metrics to prove safe reprocessing of failed messages
• Define and deploy backoff and max-retry policies for third-party API calls
• Create operational runbooks that describe how to handle poison messages and replays