What Are Durable AI Agents?
A durable AI agent is a long-lived, stateful software entity that maintains context across interactions. Unlike stateless API calls — where each request is independent and the AI has no memory of previous conversations — durable agents persist their state, conversation history, and even active connections. GreatChat runs a dedicated agent per conversation so message history, presence, and in-flight streams survive reconnects. Each chat conversation gets its own agent instance — isolated and always available when you return.
Real-Time Connections That Persist
Durable agents pair long-lived WebSocket connections with per-conversation storage. When you open a chat in GreatChat, you connect to the conversation's dedicated agent, which keeps message history, user preferences, and active generation state in sync. If your network drops, the agent preserves context so you can resume without losing the thread.
Structured Agent APIs
Instead of ad-hoc WebSocket messages, durable agents expose typed methods clients can call — for example checking session status, registering presence, or canceling an active generation. In GreatChat, this structured API keeps chat, presence, and recovery flows predictable. Agents can also schedule background work such as pruning old messages or refreshing retrieval indexes tied to project internal knowledge.
Real-World Applications Beyond Chat
While GreatChat uses durable agents for real-time AI chat, the pattern is broadly applicable. E-commerce platforms use them for shopping cart agents that maintain state across sessions. Gaming companies build matchmaking agents that track player pools in real time. GreatStudios uses durable agents for long-running creative workflows — generating images, videos, and music compositions that may take minutes or hours to complete. The common thread is persistence: agents that remember, adapt, and maintain context across time.