---
title: "Keep urgent jobs in their own queue · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues/urgent-queue
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Keep urgent jobs in their own queue

For AI agents: the [site map](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) lists everything here, and this page sits under [Background jobs and queues](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues.md).

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

- ID: SCL-20
- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Background jobs and queues](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues)
- Rule: Put jobs a person waits for, such as sign-in codes and password resets, in a separate queue with its own workers. Bulk work, such as exports and newsletters, never delays them.
- How: In one shared queue, a newsletter of 50,000 messages sits in front of a password reset. Give each queue its own pool of workers, so bulk work cannot take every worker. Watch each queue as [Alert on the age of the oldest waiting job](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/queue-age) says. Give the urgent queue the shorter limit. AWS lists one queue for many kinds of request as an anti-pattern.
- Check: Add 10,000 bulk jobs on staging, then one urgent job. The urgent job finishes within 30 seconds.

## Sources

- [AWS Well-Architected, REL05-BP04 Fail fast and limit queues](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/rel_mitigate_interaction_failure_fail_fast.html)

## Related rules

- [Alert on the age of the oldest waiting job](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/alerts-and-on-call/queue-age) in Operations

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues/urgent-queue">Agent Wranglers scaling playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Previous: [Bound the backlog and push back on producers](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues/bounded-backlog)
- Next: [Put record IDs in jobs instead of copies](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues/ids-in-jobs)
- [Background jobs and queues](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/background-jobs-and-queues)