Is your AI agent burning money? Discover why durable execution is the backbone of the 2026 AI stack and how tools like LangGraph and Redis prevent—or cause—unrecoverable GPU bonfires. In this episode of Execution Over Everything, we dive deep into the architecture of agentic workflows. We explore why stateless scripts are failing at enterprise scale and how checkpointing state allows for complex, multi-day workflows like legal research and code refactoring. However, we also confront the 'retry poison'—the dangerous reality where durable execution persists logic bugs and hallucinations, leading to massive compute costs. Whether you are building with LangGraph or managing state with Redis, understanding the balance between continuity and correctness is vital. We discuss human-in-the-loop integration, the cost of network timeouts, and why persistence is the biological memory of modern AI. Don't let a socket hangup kill your 20-minute compute run. Learn how to build resilient, cost-effective agents that survive the real world. Subscribe for more deep dives into the AI infrastructure of tomorrow. This is the definitive guide to AI agent reliability.

## Key Takeaways- Durable execution is essential for enterprise AI agents to survive network failures and timeouts.- LangGraph checkpointers allow agents to resume work without re-running expensive GPU steps.- 'Retry poison' occurs when a system persists and retries logic errors or hallucinations, leading to wasted compute.- Human-in-the-loop workflows are impossible without state persistence.## Timestamps- [00:00] Introduction to Execution Over Everything- [00:41] Defining 'Retry Poison'- [01:21] Persistence vs. Saving Mistakes- [01:48] System failure vs. Logic bugs- [02:35] The Case for Durable Execution- [03:09] LangGraph Checkpointers and Human-in-the-Loop- [03:48] Cognitive Failures and LLM Hallucinations## Resources Mentioned- LangGraph Documentation on Persistence- Redis Agent Memory Reports- Execution Over Everything Podcast## About This EpisodeThis episode tackles the backbone of the 2026 AI stack: durable execution. We debate whether state persistence is a safety net for enterprise agents or a mechanism that turns minor bugs into unrecoverable GPU bonfires.