Foundations
Foundations
When Web Agents Need to Remember What They're Doing
A web agent halfway through extracting hotel inventory across regional booking systems hits a rate limit. Should it remember where it was? Compare that to another agent checking a single price in three seconds. One workflow needs to preserve an hour of authentication and navigation state. The other can restart faster than you could save its progress.
Operating web agents at scale, this distinction shapes infrastructure complexity, recovery mechanisms, what you can reliably run. State persistence isn't binary. It's a spectrum, and understanding where your workflows fall determines what you actually need to build. Most teams make architectural commitments before they have that map.
When Web Agents Need to Remember What They're Doing
A web agent halfway through extracting hotel inventory across regional booking systems hits a rate limit. Should it remember where it was? Compare that to another agent checking a single price in three seconds. One workflow needs to preserve an hour of authentication and navigation state. The other can restart faster than you could save its progress.
Operating web agents at scale, this distinction shapes infrastructure complexity, recovery mechanisms, what you can reliably run. State persistence isn't binary. It's a spectrum, and understanding where your workflows fall determines what you actually need to build. Most teams make architectural commitments before they have that map.
The Twenty-Four Hour Problem
During a site migration, our web agents encounter something strange: different parts of our infrastructure see different versions of reality. DNS resolvers return different IP addresses for the same domain. Requests time out. Authentication fails. A 1983 architectural choice, working exactly as designed.
The number that protected root servers on a research network now creates windows where truth is relative and time-delayed. Operating web automation at scale, we can't assume DNS resolution returns consistent answers. We build around it instead.
The Twenty-Four Hour Problem
During a site migration, our web agents encounter something strange: different parts of our infrastructure see different versions of reality. DNS resolvers return different IP addresses for the same domain. Requests time out. Authentication fails. A 1983 architectural choice, working exactly as designed.
The number that protected root servers on a research network now creates windows where truth is relative and time-delayed. Operating web automation at scale, we can't assume DNS resolution returns consistent answers. We build around it instead.
Pattern Recognition from the Field
Six vendors launched AI agent identity management in November 2025. Microsoft, AWS, CyberArk, Ping Identity, Oasis Security, Akeyless. All solving the same problem: agent sprawl.
Here's what that timing tells you. 82% of companies already run AI agents. 53% of those agents touch sensitive data daily. But the infrastructure to track them, secure them, manage their lifecycles? Just showing up now.
Watch what happens in practice. Agent ownership changes hands four times in the first year. Developer leaves, agent stays. Still holding credentials, still accessing systems. No owner, no lifecycle, no audit trail.
The industry shipped agents first, asked governance questions later. Now we're retrofitting identity management onto deployed systems. Build it in from the start. Your future security team will thank you.
