The original title is: "Long-Running AI Agents Need a Lease, a Heartbeat, and a Drain Test"

Short summary

Long-running AI agents that operate over hours or days need explicit worker ownership via time-limited leases, heartbeat monitoring, and idempotent tool effects. A drain test procedure verifies that workers stop accepting tasks on termination, leases expire correctly, and a new worker can resume without repeating side effects. This reliability pattern becomes critical as agent autonomy increases.

• •Use expirable leases and heartbeats for long-running AI agent worker ownership
• •Tool effects must be idempotent to allow safe resume after worker failure
• •Drain tests verify cancellation, lease renewal, and recovery before increasing autonomy

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