# Durable Execution

> Saving workflow progress so an agent or graph can pause, fail, or wait for a person and later resume without redoing completed steps.

- Category: Agents & Autonomy
- Stage: Rising
- Also called: Resumable workflow, Persistent execution
- Canonical: https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/durable-execution

## Plain English

The agent gets a reliable save system for long work, not just a long chat history.

## Example

A procurement agent pauses for budget approval, stores its state, and resumes from the same task after approval arrives days later.

## Why it matters

Durability is becoming essential for production agents that run beyond a single request-response cycle.

## Related

- [Checkpoint](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/checkpoint)
- [Interrupt](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/interrupt)
- [Long-Running Agent](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/long-running-agent)

## Sources

- [LangGraph: Durable Execution](https://docs.langchain.com/oss/python/langgraph/durable-execution)
- [Anthropic: Effective Harnesses](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-harnesses-for-long-running-agents)