Overview

Peter Wielander from Vercel demonstrates how to transform a simple coding agent into a production-ready durable agent using the Workflow DevKit. The core insight is that workflow patterns separate orchestration from execution steps, enabling agents to run reliably in production with built-in durability, observability, and resumability without complex infrastructure setup.

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Key Takeaways

  • Use workflow patterns to isolate agent steps - separate your orchestration logic from individual tool calls and LLM interactions to enable automatic retry, caching, and fault tolerance
  • Add ‘use step’ directives to tool calls - mark functions as steps to run them in isolated serverless instances with automatic input/output caching and retriability
  • Leverage built-in sleep and webhook capabilities - workflows can suspend for days/weeks without consuming resources and resume exactly where they left off, perfect for long-running agent tasks
  • Design for resumable streams - disconnect and reconnect to agent sessions at any time since streams persist independently of API handlers, enabling true session durability
  • Implement human-in-the-loop workflows easily - use webhook steps to pause agent execution and wait for human approval before continuing with full state preservation

Topics Covered