Working on multi-step agent systems (agents calling tools, other agents, APIs), I keep running into a frustrating class of failures:
One step returns slightly malformed or incomplete state
Downstream steps continue executing anyway
The issue only surfaces several steps later
Nothing actually “fails” — the system just produces the wrong result.
These are hard to catch:
Logs/traces help explain what happened after the fact
But they don’t prevent bad execution from propagating
I’m experimenting with:
Explicit state validation between steps
Blocking unsafe transitions
Replay from intermediate failure points
Curious how others are handling this in production. Are you relying purely on tracing/logs, or enforcing stricter contracts between steps?
I’m building something in this space and looking for a few design partners to try it out (happy to wire it up myself):
https://www.agentsentinelai.com/
One step returns slightly malformed or incomplete state Downstream steps continue executing anyway The issue only surfaces several steps later
Nothing actually “fails” — the system just produces the wrong result.
These are hard to catch:
Logs/traces help explain what happened after the fact But they don’t prevent bad execution from propagating
I’m experimenting with:
Explicit state validation between steps Blocking unsafe transitions Replay from intermediate failure points
Curious how others are handling this in production. Are you relying purely on tracing/logs, or enforcing stricter contracts between steps?
I’m building something in this space and looking for a few design partners to try it out (happy to wire it up myself): https://www.agentsentinelai.com/