# Shopify/maintenance_tasks

A Rails engine for queueing and managing data migrations.

Repository: https://github.com/Shopify/maintenance_tasks
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/maintenance_tasks
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: rails, ruby, backfill, data, migration
Last push: 2026-08-22T00:14:20+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 90/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 75, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2171, "days_push": 12, "days_rel": 91, "gap_med": 40, "n_releases_24m": 10}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1304, forks 112 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:18.481164+00:00)

## What it is
A Rails engine for queuing, running, and managing one-off data migrations (maintenance tasks) such as backfills. It provides a web UI to start, pause, and resume collection-based tasks with batching and throttling.

## Use cases
- backfill a new NOT NULL column in a Rails app
- run one-off data migrations with a web UI
- pause and resume long-running database data updates
- batch-update database records with throttling
- manage ephemeral maintenance tasks in Rails

## When to choose
- you need to backfill or transform data in a Rails database as a one-off
- you want an interruptible, pausable task UI on top of Active Job
- your task is collection-based (database rows or CSV) and benefits from batching

## When to avoid
- the task runs on a regular schedule - use cron or scheduled Active Jobs instead
- the task changes schema rather than data - use a Rails migration
- the task doesn't need to run in the background - use a runner script
- your app can't tolerate a half-completed migration

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: workflow-automation, database, web-framework
- domain: databases, web-development, developer-tools, backend
- platform: ruby, self-hosted
- tags: rails-engine, data-migrations, backfill, active-job, background-tasks, web-server

## Member repositories
- Shopify/maintenance_tasks (main) score 90

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:18.481164+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:51:05.976068+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Shopify/maintenance_tasks (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:18.481164+00:00, sha 2200387bec63)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.