Install the Queen queue connection, dispatch an existing Laravel job, run a worker, and choose how to supervise it.

Queen can play two separate roles in a Laravel application:

The queen queue connection stores Laravel jobs in Queen instead of Redis or a database table.
The optional Queen supervisor starts, stops and balances ordinary queue:work queen processes.

You can use the queue connection with your existing process manager and add the supervisor later. Your jobs still implement Laravel’s normal ShouldQueue contract and keep their middleware, retry, backoff and failed-job events.

Before you start

You need PHP 8.3 or newer, a Laravel application and a reachable Queen broker. If Queen is not running yet, start the local Compose stack first.

The queue driver itself does not require the process-control extensions. The Queen supervisors are Unix-only today and add pcntl and posix requirements.

Install the queue connection

Install the Composer package.
```
composer require queen-mq/php-client
```
Publish the configuration.
```
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=queen-config
```
Package discovery registers the service provider, the Queen facade and a queen queue connection. You do not need to add that connection to config/queue.php unless you want to override it explicitly.
Point Laravel at Queen.
```
QUEUE_CONNECTION=queen
QUEEN_URL=http://127.0.0.1:6632
QUEEN_QUEUE=default
QUEEN_CONSUMER_GROUP=laravel
QUEEN_RETRY_AFTER=90
QUEEN_PREFETCH=1
QUEEN_ACK_BATCH=1
```
Add QUEEN_BEARER_TOKEN when the broker requires authentication. Keep secrets outside source control. Give each logical application and environment a stable consumer-group name: two applications sharing one group intentionally share one cursor and split the work.

Dispatch an existing job. Nothing changes at the call site.

use App\Jobs\GenerateInvoice;

GenerateInvoice::dispatch($invoiceId);

Run one worker.
```
php artisan queue:work queen --queue=default --timeout=60 --tries=3
```
QUEEN_RETRY_AFTER is the lease duration. It must be longer than the worker timeout and the longest job runtime. Stop this first worker with the same signal you use for any Laravel worker.

At this point the integration works without either Queen supervisor. Keep your current systemd, Kubernetes, Supervisor or platform process definition if all you need is a fixed worker count.

Start with the safe delivery profile

The default prefetch=1 and ack_batch=1 preserve one synchronous acknowledgement boundary per job. Use this profile while validating a migration and whenever every job, including safety margin, fits inside retry_after.

Values above one reduce broker round trips, but they widen the at-least-once redelivery window. A Laravel worker may also pause while it still owns a prefetched tail. The Queen connector therefore rejects prefetch > 1 unless lease renewal is enabled, whether workers are started by Queen or by another process manager.

QUEEN_PREFETCH=4
QUEEN_ACK_BATCH=1
QUEEN_LEASE_RENEWAL=true

Enable lease renewal even with prefetch=1 when the longest runtime cannot be bounded safely. Lease renewal starts a small PHP helper beside each worker. It extends the active lease and fences the worker if renewal can no longer finish safely. An exact-PID SIGCHLD watchdog also kills the owning worker if that helper disappears while a lease is active. This Unix CLI path requires PCNTL/POSIX support, and application code must not replace Queen’s signal handler. Renewal cannot make external side effects exactly once, so jobs must remain idempotent.

What changes from another Laravel connection

Area	What stays the same	What changes with Queen
Job code	`ShouldQueue`, `dispatch()`, middleware, timeout, tries and backoff	Storage and delivery use Queen leases and consumer groups
Delays	Laravel delayed dispatch and positive backoff	Queen timers store the delay
Failures	Laravel’s failed-job commands remain the command index	Queen also retains a synchronized DLQ snapshot by default
Ordering	Laravel queue names	Implement `QueenPartitionable` when one entity needs its own FIFO lane
Delivery	At-least-once	A lease expiry or worker crash can redeliver a job
Clearing	Connection-specific	Queen does not yet provide one atomic clear across ready jobs, live leases and Laravel timers

Choose how workers are managed

Choice	Use it when	Master process
Existing process manager	You want a fixed number of `queue:work` processes	Whatever you already operate
Queen PHP	You want Horizon-like local pools with no native artifact	Laravel remains loaded in one PHP master
Queen Rust	You want the smallest control plane and crash-loop circuit breaking	Rust, after one temporary Artisan configuration load

The PHP and Rust engines read the same configuration and publish the same state protocol. Begin with Worker supervisors, then enable the Laravel dashboard only after authentication is in place.

Worker supervisors

Configure pools, autoscaling, the PHP fallback and the optimized Rust engine.

Supervisor dashboard

Enable the local panel, authorize it and understand what it deliberately does not expose.

Migrate from Horizon

Map the configuration, canary Queen, drain Redis and keep a rollback boundary.

Queen or Horizon

A direct comparison, including the places where Horizon remains the better choice.

Laravel queues