How to make a Payload CMS plugin get initialized instantly on startup?

[MurzNN]

As I see, Payload plugins get initialized only when I open a page in the browser, so if I start it using pnpm dev and do not open anything - no plugins are loaded. Is there any way to make a specific plugin start instantly, without waiting for a webpage request from the user?

So, this:

$ pnpm dev

> [email protected] dev /var/www/html
> cross-env NODE_OPTIONS=--no-deprecation next dev

   ▲ Next.js 15.3.2
   - Local:        http://localhost:3000
   - Network:      http://172.19.0.4:3000
   - Environments: .env

 ✓ Starting...
 ✓ Ready in 2.8s

can hang forever, but if I open a frontpage, or any other page, only there it starts to initialize plugins:

 ✓ Starting...
 ✓ Ready in 2.8s
[infinity]
 ○ Compiling / ...
 ✓ Compiled / in 7.2s (974 modules)
🚀 MyPlugin initialization started...

[MurzNN]

The same issue with the function onInit in the buildConfig() - if I simply add some console output in the payload.config.ts file:

export default buildConfig({
  async onInit(payload) {
    console.log('Payload init!')
  }
}

it outputs this only after the first HTTP request is made, not after pnpm dev or pnpm start.

[MurzNN]

Found a way to initialize Payload automatically on the Next.js startup - you need to create the src/instrumentation.ts file with content like this:

import config from '@payload-config';
import { getPayload } from 'payload';

export async function register() {
  if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
    return; // Skip on client side
  }

  // Only run on Node.js runtime (server side)
  if (process.env.NEXT_RUNTIME === 'nodejs' || !process.env.NEXT_RUNTIME) {
    await getPayload({ config })
  }
}

Not sure that this is the best way, but at least, works well for my case!

More details: https://nextjs.org/docs/app/guides/instrumentation

If you know a more elegant solution for this, please share!