Sagents.AgentPersistence behaviour (Sagents v0.8.0-rc.4)

Behaviour for persisting agent state snapshots.

Implement this behaviour in your application to enable automatic state persistence at key lifecycle points. If no persistence module is configured, AgentServer operates entirely in-memory.

Scope-first contract

Every callback takes the integrator's scope struct as its first positional argument.

Scope is opaque to sagents (term() | nil). Implementations can pattern-match on their own Scope struct (%MyApp.Accounts.Scope{} = scope) in the callback head.

Lifecycle Contexts

The context.lifecycle key indicates why persistence was triggered:

Lifecycle	When	Notes
`:on_completion`	Agent execution completes successfully (status → :idle)	Most common persistence point
`:on_cancel`	Execution cancelled by user	Preserves rolling state up to cancel point
`:on_error`	Agent execution fails (status → :error)	Preserves state up to the error
`:on_interrupt`	Execution paused for HITL approval (status → :interrupted)	Preserves interrupt context
`:on_title_generated`	Conversation title auto-generated	State includes updated metadata
`:on_shutdown`	Agent process terminating (inactivity timeout, node shutdown)	Best-effort — DB may also be shutting down

Configuration

Per-agent via AgentServer start options (passed through AgentSupervisor):

supervisor_config = [
  agent_id: agent_id,
  agent_persistence: MyApp.AgentPersistence,
  # ... other config
]

No configuration = no persistence. AgentServer works fine without it.

Summary

Types

lifecycle()

load_context()

Context map passed to load_state/2. Contains the agent and conversation identifiers.

persist_context()

Context map passed to persist_state/3. Contains the agent and conversation identifiers plus the lifecycle reason for this persistence call.

Callbacks

load_state(scope, context)

Called to load a previously persisted state when starting an agent.

persist_state(scope, state_data, context)

Called when the agent should persist its current state.

Types

lifecycle()

@type lifecycle() ::
  :on_completion
  | :on_cancel
  | :on_error
  | :on_interrupt
  | :on_title_generated
  | :on_shutdown

load_context()

@type load_context() :: %{agent_id: String.t(), conversation_id: String.t() | nil}

Context map passed to load_state/2. Contains the agent and conversation identifiers.

persist_context()

@type persist_context() :: %{
  agent_id: String.t(),
  conversation_id: String.t() | nil,
  lifecycle: lifecycle()
}

Context map passed to persist_state/3. Contains the agent and conversation identifiers plus the lifecycle reason for this persistence call.

Callbacks

load_state(scope, context)

@callback load_state(scope :: term() | nil, context :: load_context()) ::
  {:ok, map()} | {:error, :not_found | term()}

Called to load a previously persisted state when starting an agent.

scope is the integrator-defined scope struct. Use it to verify that the requested conversation belongs to the caller before returning state.

context carries :agent_id and :conversation_id.

Returns the serialized state map, or {:error, :not_found} if no saved state exists (normal for first-time agents).

persist_state(scope, state_data, context)

@callback persist_state(
  scope :: term() | nil,
  state_data :: map(),
  context :: persist_context()
) :: :ok | {:error, term()}

Called when the agent should persist its current state.

scope is the integrator-defined scope struct (or nil for unscoped callers like admin tools). Use it to filter tenant-isolated DB writes.

state_data is the serialized state map (string keys, JSON-compatible) as returned by StateSerializer.serialize_server_state/2.

context carries :agent_id, :conversation_id, and :lifecycle (why persistence was triggered).

Return :ok on success. Errors are logged but do not affect agent operation.