I don't think you can have automated retry because if the application logic lives outside the database and is not subject to its transaction processing (which i

I don't think you can have automated retry because if the application logic lives outside the database and is not subject to its transaction processing (which is the common programming pattern today, I think), the database has to arrange for a re-run of that logic if any of the observed database state changes (such as the followers_count returned from the SELECT statement in the example). This means that the code implementing the application code has to be ready to execute multiple times without ill effects, and application programmers need to be aware of that.