AI-native development · Glossary term
What is Idempotency?
The property that repeating the same operation with the same identity does not create additional side effects beyond the first successful application.
Why does Idempotency matter?
Retries are normal in distributed agent systems. Without idempotency, one uncertain response can duplicate payments, comments, deployments, or records.
Idempotency in practice
Attach an idempotency key to a tool request and persist the completed result so a retry returns that result instead of executing the write again.
What is the common confusion about Idempotency?
Idempotency does not mean every response is byte-for-byte identical. It means the intended state change is not duplicated.
Learn Idempotency in the course
Lessons that name Idempotency in a title or section
- Human-in-the-Loop: Propose-Then-Commit
The 2026 consensus on HITL is specific. It is not "the agent asks, the user clicks Approve." It is propose-then-commit: the proposed action is persisted to a durable store with an idempotency key;…
- Checkpoints and Rollback
Every graph-state transition persists. When a worker crashes, its lease expires and another worker picks up at the latest checkpoint. Cloudflare Durable Objects hold state across hours or weeks.
Covered in Phase 15: Autonomous Systems.
Related terms
- Retry with BackoffRepeating a failed transient operation after progressively longer delays, usually with randomized jitter and a strict retry limit.
- Durable ExecutionRunning a workflow so its state and completed steps survive process crashes, restarts, or long waits without redoing confirmed side effects.
- CheckpointA durable snapshot used to resume from a known boundary. In a workflow, it stores operational state and artifact references.
- Compensating ActionA deliberate operation that semantically counteracts a completed side effect when the original operation cannot be rolled back atomically.
- Stateless MCPThe MCP 2026-07-28 request model in which every request carries the protocol version and client capabilities in `params._meta`, while…
- Tool ContractThe complete agreement for a tool boundary: purpose, typed inputs, outputs, validation, permissions, side effects, errors, timeouts,…
Sources
More terms in AI-native development
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