Summary: Function Triggers invoke a deployed Neon Function in response to an event, with no external scheduler and no compute kept running to watch for it. Covers the trigger types (schedule and object-created), what an invocation sends your function, and how triggers behave across branches.

Let Neon invoke a function for you.

A Function Trigger tells Neon to invoke a deployed Neon Function in response to an event, so recurring or event-driven work runs as your own code next to your data. There's no scheduler or queue to operate and no compute kept running to watch for the event. Functions are long-running, so one trigger handles a quick health check or a table-scanning batch, and it fires even when the compute is scaled to zero.

Trigger types available today:

• schedule: a cron expression evaluated in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). See Schedule a function.
• storage_object_created: an object created in an Object Storage bucket, optionally under a key prefix. See Trigger on an object upload.

The API uses a type discriminator, so more types can be added later without changing existing triggers. Manage triggers from the Neon Console, the neon triggers CLI, the Neon API, or neon.ts; each guide shows which of these its type supports.

A trigger belongs to a project and branch and points to one function on that branch.

Neon returns these read-only fields on every trigger:

A function can have multiple triggers, each evaluated independently, for example a 15-minute sync and a nightly full run. Give each a distinct function_path, or read trigger.id / trigger.name from the request body, so the handler can tell them apart.

When a trigger fires, Neon sends the function:

• Method: POST.

• Path: the trigger's function_path, exactly as configured. Your handler needs a route that matches it (the default / matches app.post('/')).

• Body: a JSON envelope describing the occurrence. The shape is the same for every trigger type; trigger.type and the data object vary:

  {
    "version": 1,
    "invocation_id": "abc123FUPHOw0Pl1ZooidgpJhvHaShi1aX40cQ0b321",
    "trigger": { "type": "schedule", "id": "trigger-1a2b3c4d-5e6f-7890-abcd-ef1234567890", "name": "uptime-check" },
    "data": { "scheduled_at": "2026-09-08T19:30:00Z" }
  }

  data holds the event details: scheduled_at (UTC) for a schedule trigger, or bucket_name and object_key for a storage_object_created trigger. trigger says which trigger fired, so a function with several triggers can tell them apart. Here trigger.id is the same value as the trigger resource's trigger_id, and this version is the payload's schema version, not the trigger's configuration version.

• Headers: content-type: application/json, a W3C traceparent, and X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id (equal to the body's invocation_id).

Design your handler for the trigger type you use: it answers POST and reads what it needs from data.

A trigger invocation can be slower on a cold start: if the function's runtime was idle and evicted, Neon spins it up first, and a query to a Postgres compute that has scaled to zero wakes that compute too.

Neon delivers trigger calls to the function's public URL. To confirm a request is a genuine trigger invocation and not an arbitrary caller, check for the X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id header: Neon strips any client-supplied X-Neon-* header at the edge, so a request that carries one is sent by Neon's trigger system. A handler that only serves triggers can reject requests that lack it, as the worked handler does.

The invocation_id is a correlation ID, not a secret. It's a digest of the trigger and its occurrence, stable across retries, so it ties your logs to a specific run. What proves the request came from Neon is the presence of the header, not its value, so matching the header against the body is only a consistency check. Keep the handler idempotent and guard destructive actions regardless.

Triggers only fire from Neon's side against the deployed function, so a trigger never calls your local machine. To iterate on the handler, serve the function with neon dev and replay the trigger payload yourself with curl.

1. Start the dev server:

   neon dev

   It serves the functions declared in neon.ts with hot reload, injects DATABASE_URL and other Neon variables from the linked branch, and prints a local URL for each function (by default http://localhost:8787).

2. Send a POST to the local URL plus the trigger's function_path, with the same JSON envelope the trigger would send. Include an X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id header if your handler checks for it. A schedule replay carries data.scheduled_at:

   curl -X POST http://localhost:8787/ \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id: local-test" \
     -d '{"version":1,"invocation_id":"local-1","trigger":{"type":"schedule","id":"trigger-local","name":"local-schedule"},"data":{"scheduled_at":"2026-09-08T19:30:00Z"}}'

   An object-created replay carries data.bucket_name and data.object_key:

   curl -X POST http://localhost:8787/ \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id: local-test" \
     -d '{"version":1,"invocation_id":"local-2","trigger":{"type":"storage_object_created","id":"trigger-local","name":"local-upload"},"data":{"bucket_name":"my-bucket","object_key":"uploads/report.csv"}}'

Handler output appears in the neon dev terminal rather than in neon logs query. Leave off the X-Neon-Trigger-Invocation-Id header to confirm a guarded handler returns 403. If the handler reads from Object Storage, the bucket and object live on the branch, so deploy first and make sure the object you replay exists there.

Triggers follow Neon's branch inheritance:

• A child branch inherits its parent's triggers. They appear with inherited: true, enabled: false, and next_run_at: null, and keep the same trigger_id. An inherited trigger doesn't run on the child until you enable it there.
• Editing an inherited trigger makes it branch-local. The PATCH creates a child-local copy under the same trigger_id, and inherited becomes false. The parent is unchanged.
• Deleting an inherited trigger on the child removes it there for good. It won't reappear, and the parent keeps running it.

So branching a production branch for a test doesn't double your scheduled work. Nothing runs on the child until you enable it, and enabling it there can't affect the parent.

When you're ready, walk through a worked example for each type: Schedule a function (with a cron reference) and Trigger on an object upload.

• Schedule a function
• Trigger on object upload

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