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.
2 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 13.2 ms ] thread