State Is the Hardest Problem in AI Agents

Building AI agents seems straightforward on paper: observe, decide, act, persist state. But after building a few, I can confidently say state is the hardest part by far. If you’ve ever wrestled with managing state across async calls, dynamic environments, or even basic user sessions, you probably feel my pain. Why state gets ignored (and why that's a mistake) Most AI tutorials focus on the flashy parts: decision-making, generating text, or automating tasks. Persistent state? It’s either glossed over or duct-taped together. And honestly, that works fine - until it doesn’t.