4 ms·

This is true after learning this framing. It's more like the log is the only user/agent accepted consensus. It has to be the grounding base. Although extending

This is true after learning this framing. It's more like the log is the only user/agent accepted consensus. It has to be the grounding base. Although extending it into an agentic system architecture becomes something not necessarily effective in practice.

lmwnshn 3mo ago
With my database hat on, in the context of agentic systems I would argue that write-ahead logs form a good (and potentially transactional) interface between speculative agent work and durable world mutations [0]. That said, there are a _lot_ of "logs for agents" papers that I've read (and unfortunately gotten assigned to review) which are basically "we asked claude to hack on a graph DB and generate a paper". [0] https://onewill.ai/blog/2026/stealing-50-years-of-database-ideas-for-ai-agents/ https://onewill.ai/blog/2026/stealing-50-years-of-database-i...
- try-working 3mo ago
  We should probably only interact with the agent by writing to the log, which it executes from, and the agent should probably only interact with the external environment by writing and executing code. That fixes a lot of issues with non-determinism.
  - lmwnshn 3mo ago
    Agreed. While not directly applicable, I was a huge fan of Mozilla's rr [0] in undergrad. Quoting their site: > rr records a group of Linux user-space processes and captures all inputs to those processes from the kernel, plus any nondeterministic CPU effects performed by those processes (of which there are very few). I think the solution will resemble that. You don't control the LLM, sure. But you can control what it sees, and maybe that's good enough. [0] https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/
  - DenisM 3mo ago
    What if a tool produced an error and a retry? Is retry loop now a part of the log?
    - lmwnshn 3mo ago
      Flaky tools and unreliable systems aren't that different. "What if my database crashes while recovering? What if it crashes while recovering from a crash-while-recovering?" That's when you pull out database ARIES, UNDO / REDO.

lmwnshn 3mo ago

With my database hat on, in the context of agentic systems I would argue that write-ahead logs form a good (and potentially transactional) interface between speculative agent work and durable world mutations [0]. That said, there are a _lot_ of "logs for agents" papers that I've read (and unfortunately gotten assigned to review) which are basically "we asked claude to hack on a graph DB and generate a paper". [0] https://onewill.ai/blog/2026/stealing-50-years-of-database-ideas-for-ai-agents/ https://onewill.ai/blog/2026/stealing-50-years-of-database-i...

try-working 3mo ago
We should probably only interact with the agent by writing to the log, which it executes from, and the agent should probably only interact with the external environment by writing and executing code. That fixes a lot of issues with non-determinism.
- lmwnshn 3mo ago
  Agreed. While not directly applicable, I was a huge fan of Mozilla's rr [0] in undergrad. Quoting their site: > rr records a group of Linux user-space processes and captures all inputs to those processes from the kernel, plus any nondeterministic CPU effects performed by those processes (of which there are very few). I think the solution will resemble that. You don't control the LLM, sure. But you can control what it sees, and maybe that's good enough. [0] https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/
- DenisM 3mo ago
  What if a tool produced an error and a retry? Is retry loop now a part of the log?
  - lmwnshn 3mo ago
    Flaky tools and unreliable systems aren't that different. "What if my database crashes while recovering? What if it crashes while recovering from a crash-while-recovering?" That's when you pull out database ARIES, UNDO / REDO.