Skip to main content

Tutorials

Tutorials take you by the hand and get you a small, complete, working result. Each one is a short happy path: run the commands, see the output you're told to expect, and you're done. No detours, no edge cases, no "it depends" — just steps that work.

That's the difference from the rest of the docs:

  • Tutorials (you are here) show you that it works. Follow the steps and you'll be done in 10–20 minutes.
  • Learn deep dives explain why it works: the mechanisms, the trade-offs, and the judgment to use NATS well.
  • Concepts give the big-picture overview of what NATS is.

Each tutorial is self-contained. Start anywhere, but if you're brand new, the order below builds up naturally.

Start here​

Work through these in order, or jump to whatever you need:

  1. Hello NATS: install a server, publish your first message, and watch a subscriber receive it.
  2. Request/reply: stand up a responder and call it to get an answer back.
  3. Work queue: split a stream of jobs across two workers so each job goes to exactly one of them.
  4. Your first stream: turn on JetStream and create a stream that keeps your messages so you can replay them.
  5. Stream consumer: read a stream with a durable consumer that acknowledges messages and resumes where it left off.
  6. Key-value: use a tiny state store. Put a value, get it back, and watch it change live.
  7. Build an app: combine pub/sub, request/reply, and a stream into one small running program.

Already comfortable?​

Want the why behind any of this? Jump straight to the Learn deep dives for the mechanisms, the design choices, and how to use NATS well.