Core Concepts

This page explains the key building blocks of Rinda and how they relate to each other.

Architecture Overview

Account
  └── Project
       └── Environment (dev / staging / production)
            ├── Queues
            │    └── Messages
            └── Storage Objects

Account

Your Rinda account is the top-level container. Each account has:

• A billing subscription (Free, Scale, or Dedicated)
• One or more projects
• Per-account encryption — every account gets its own encryption key

Projects

A project groups related queues and storage objects together. Think of it as a workspace for a single application or microservice.

• Each project has its own set of environments
• Queues and storage are isolated per project

Environments

Each project comes with three environments out of the box:

Environment	Purpose
Development	Local development and testing
Staging	Pre-production validation
Production	Live traffic

API keys are scoped to an environment, so your dev code can never accidentally write to production queues.

Queues

A queue is a message channel. Rinda supports two types:

Standard Queues

• Best-effort ordering — messages are generally delivered in order, but not guaranteed
• At-least-once delivery — messages may be delivered more than once
• Higher throughput — no ordering constraints

FIFO Queues

• Strict ordering — messages are delivered in the exact order they were sent
• Exactly-once processing — message deduplication prevents duplicates
• Message groups — independent ordering within groups

Messages

Messages are the data you send through queues. Key properties:

Property	Description
body	Any JSON payload (up to 190 KB inline, 1 MB stored)
delaySeconds	Delay before the message becomes visible (0-900s)
visibilityTimeout	Time a message stays invisible after being received
groupId	Message group for FIFO ordering
deduplicationId	Prevents duplicate messages in FIFO queues

Message Lifecycle

Sent → Pending → Received (invisible) → Deleted (acknowledged)
                      │
                      └→ Visible again (if not deleted within visibility timeout)
                              │
                              └→ Dead Letter Queue (after max retries)

Large Messages

Messages over 190 KB are automatically stored in Rinda Storage and a reference pointer is sent through the queue. This is transparent — you always receive the full message body.

Message Storage

Rinda keeps message bodies so that:

• Large payloads can be sent at all — a body over the queue's limit is stored, and a reference travels on the queue
• Messages can be inspected long after they were processed
• Messages can be replayed, using the body exactly as it was sent

How long they are kept is set per account. See Message Storage.

Dead Letter Queues (DLQ)

When a message fails to be processed after a configurable number of attempts, it is automatically moved to a dead-letter queue for investigation. DLQ can be enabled per queue with a single toggle.

Next Steps

• Quickstart — Send your first message
• Queues Guide — Deep dive into queue configuration
• API Reference — Full API documentation