README

[!IMPORTANT] 🚀 Motia 1.0-RC is here — now powered by the iii engine, a Rust-based runtime that manages queues, state, streams, cron, and observability through a single iii-config.yaml.

📖 Migration Guide (v0.17 → v1.0) · 🚀 Quick Start

🚀 Create your first Motia App

Install the CLI:

brew tap MotiaDev/tap
brew install motia-cli

Or via shell script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MotiaDev/motia-cli/main/install.sh | sh

Then create a project:

motia-cli create my-app

📖 Full quickstart guide →

🎯 What is Motia?

Backend development today is fragmented.

APIs live in one framework, background jobs in another, queues and schedulers elsewhere, and now AI agents and streaming systems have their own runtimes. Add observability and state management on top, and you're stitching together half a dozen tools before writing your first feature.

Motia unifies all of these concerns around one core primitive: the Step.

Just as React made frontend development simple by introducing components, Motia redefines backend development with Steps - a single primitive that handles everything.

Every backend pattern, API endpoints, background jobs, queues, workflows, AI agents, streaming, observability, and state, is expressed with the same primitive.

To read more about this, check out our manifesto.

The Core Primitive: the Step

A Step is just a file with a config and a handler. Motia auto-discovers these files and connects them automatically.

Here's a simple example of two Steps working together: an HTTP Step that enqueues a message, and a Queue Step that processes it.

// steps/send-message.step.ts
export const config = {
  name: 'SendMessage',
  triggers: [
    {
      type: 'http',
      method: 'POST',
      path: '/messages',
    }
  ],
  enqueues: ['message.sent']
};

export const handler = async (req, { enqueue }) => {
  await enqueue({
    topic: 'message.sent',
    data: { text: req.body.text }
  });
  return { status: 200, body: { ok: true } };
};

// steps/process-message.step.ts
export const config = {
  name: 'ProcessMessage',
  triggers: [
    {
      type: 'queue',
      topic: 'message.sent',
    }
  ],
};

export const handler = async (input, { logger }) => {
  logger.info('Processing message', input);
};

// steps/send-message.step.js
const config = {
  name: 'SendMessage',
  triggers: [
    {
      type: 'http',
      method: 'POST',
      path: '/messages',
    }
  ],
  enqueues: ['message.sent']
};

const handler = async (req, { enqueue }) => {
  await enqueue({
    topic: 'message.sent',
    data: { text: req.body.text }
  });
  return { status: 200, body: { ok: true } };
};

module.exports = { config, handler };

// steps/process-message.step.js
const config = {
  name: 'ProcessMessage',
  triggers: [
    {
      type: 'queue',
      topic: 'message.sent',
    }
  ],
};

const handler = async (input, { logger }) => {
  logger.info('Processing message', input);
};

module.exports = { config, handler };

# steps/send_message_step.py
config = {
    "name": "SendMessage",
    "triggers": [
        {
            "type": "http",
            "method": "POST",
            "path": "/messages",
        }
    ],
    "enqueues": ["message.sent"],
}


async def handler(req, ctx):
    await ctx.enqueue({
        "topic": "message.sent",
        "data": {"text": req.body.get("text")},
    })
    return {"status": 200, "body": {"ok": True}}

# steps/process_message_step.py
config = {
    "name": "ProcessMessage",
    "triggers": [
        {
            "type": "queue",
            "topic": "message.sent",
        }
    ],
}


async def handler(input, ctx):
    ctx.logger.info("Processing message", input)

👉 With just two files, you've built an API endpoint, a queue, and a worker. No extra frameworks required.

Learn more about Steps →

🚀 Quickstart

Get Motia project up and running in under 60 seconds:

0. Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ — for TypeScript/JavaScript Steps
• Python 3 — optional, for Python Steps

1. Install the Motia CLI

brew tap MotiaDev/tap
brew install motia-cli

Or via shell script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MotiaDev/motia-cli/main/install.sh | sh

2. Bootstrap a New Motia Project

motia-cli create my-app

The CLI auto-detects and installs the iii engine if it's not already on your system.

Follow the prompts to pick a language and template.

3. Start the iii Engine

Inside your new project folder (the iii-config.yaml was generated by the create command above), start the iii engine:

iii -c iii-config.yaml

That's it! You have:

• ✅ REST APIs with validation
• ✅ Multi-language support
• ✅ Event-driven architecture
• ✅ Zero configuration
• ✅ AI development guides included (Cursor, OpenCode, Codex, and more)

📖 Full tutorial in our docs →

🤖 AI-Assisted Development

Every Motia project includes detailed AI development guides that work with any AI coding tool:

• Cursor IDE - Optimized .mdc rules with context-aware suggestions
• OpenCode, Codex (OpenAI) - Full support via AGENTS.md standard
• Aider, Jules, Factory, Amp, GitHub Copilot - Compatible with AGENTS.md format (used by 20k+ projects)

The guides include patterns for API endpoints, background tasks, state management, real-time streaming, and complete architecture blueprints.

🤖 Learn more about AI development support →

🎯 Triggers

📖 Learn more about Steps →

🎯 Examples

🏆 ChessArena.ai - Full-Featured Production App

A complete chess platform benchmarking LLM performance with real-time evaluation.

Live Website → | Source Code →

Built from scratch to production deployment, featuring:

• 🔐 Authentication & user management
• 🤖 Multi-agent LLM evaluation (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok)
• 🐍 Python engine integration (Stockfish chess evaluation)
• 📊 Real-time streaming with live move updates and scoring
• 🎨 Modern React UI with interactive chess boards
• 🔄 Event-driven workflows connecting TypeScript APIs to Python processors
• 📈 Live leaderboards with move-by-move quality scoring
• 🚀 Production deployment on Motia Cloud

📚 More Examples

View all 20+ examples →

Features demonstrated: Multi-language workflows • Real-time streaming • AI integration • Production deployment

🌐 Language Support

📚 Resources

• 📖 Documentation - Complete guides and API reference
• 💬 Discord - Community support and discussions
• 🐛 GitHub Issues - Bug reports and feature requests
• 🗺️ Roadmap - Upcoming features and progress

🚧 Roadmap

We have a public roadmap for Motia, you can view it here.

Feel free to add comments to the issues, or create a new issue if you have a feature request.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Check our Contributing Guide to get started.

🚀 Get Started • 📖 Docs • 💬 Discord

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