Breaking the Chain: Agent Continuations for Resumable AI Workflows - Greg Benson
Jun 3, 2025 · 27:02
Greg Benson from SnapLogic introduces Agent Continuations, a mechanism to capture and resume the full state of AI agents, enabling human-in-the-loop approval and reliable checkpointing for long-running agent workflows. The solution borrows from programming language continuations: at any suspension point (e.g., a tool needing human approval), the agent’s state is bundled into a JSON continuation object containing the messages array, resume request, and approval metadata. This object can be saved or passed to an application layer, allowing agent loops to be fully shut down and later restored without losing progress. Benson demonstrates with a multi-level HR agent that suspends for human approval of an account authorization tool, then resumes seamlessly. The approach handles arbitrary nesting of subagents and is implemented as an open-source Python prototype that works with any OpenAI-compatible API. Future work includes general suspension triggers and integration with existing frameworks like LangChain or Pydantic AI.
