3 ms·
Ask HN: How to scale agent systems when Layer 7 is unreliable?
Agent workflows often involve 10+ API calls to different services
(LLMs, data APIs, web scraping). Layer 7 being unreliable =
workflows fail or cause retry storms.
Common failure modes I'm thinking about:
- 429 rate limits → agents retry → hammer API worse
- Partial outages → synchronized retries across customers
- LangGraph workflows fail mid-execution → how to resume?
For those running agent systems at scale:
- How do you handle Layer 7 failures?
- Retry coordination? Circuit breakers?
- How do you prevent retry storms to downstream dependencies?
- Do LangGraph workflows gracefully handle API failures?
Curious what the production reality looks like.
- verdverm 7mo agoThere's nothing special about agents in this respect, the same techniques we use for other services.
- rjpruitt16 7mo agoWhat do you use?