Claude Agent SDK: Production Patterns
Demo agents fail fast. Production agents fail slowly, expensively, and in ways that evade testing.
Five Non-Negotiable Production Patterns
| PATTERN | WHY |
|---|---|
| Durable State Outside Process | Store in Postgres/Redis, not in-memory. Treat SDK session as ephemeral. |
| Hard Cost Caps | Per-task, per-user, per-tenant. In the agent harness, not a billing alert. |
| Circuit Breakers | Stop runaway loops before they drain budget. Max iterations + token budget. |
| Tool Permissioning | Per-tool human approval: auto/ask/deny. Write actions always require approval. |
| Observability from Day 1 | Traces, spend ledger, audit log flowing before production. |
Error Handling Pattern
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