The technology disclosed relates to processing events generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In particular, it relates to storing a machine-readable declarative specification of stateful event processing of an automated multi-step progression of monitoring of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that generate events. It includes compiling into tangible memory, in response to the declarative specification, a state processing network that implements a multi-step progression of monitoring events generated by the IoT devices. The state processing network implements both the time based transition triggers and the event based transition triggers after being initiated by the IoT devices. Further, data structures, which record monitoring status of particular IoT devices, are compiled. Finally, the state processing network further selects an alternative action to trigger, and triggers the selected action using at least some data from a particular event being processed.