Your agent architecture has a half-life of 6 months — Dan Farrelly, CTO, Inngest

Agent architectures face a rapid six-month half-life, necessitating a shift from monolithic designs to a decoupled, layered model. The execution layer, acting as the system's brain, must be separated from the context and compute layers to ensure durability, resumability, and observability. By isolating the execution layer—responsible for state, retries, and orchestration—developers can swap out evolving components like LLMs, prompts, or sandboxes without rewriting the entire system. This approach is essential for modern, long-running agent patterns such as background agents and autonomous loops, which require robust failure handling and deep inspection capabilities. Prioritizing a stable execution layer allows for consistent performance measurement and iterative improvement, ultimately reducing technical debt and enabling systems to adapt to the fast-paced evolution of AI infrastructure.