Absurd, a Postgres-native workflow engine for edge agents

Anusheel BhushanAnusheel Bhushanco-founder of PlankOriginally posted on LinkedIn 

Really cool Postgres-native workflow system. The agent's entire pause/resume state lives in the DB; the worker process can exit. For running AI agents on the edge on end client machines, this is the unlock: because the whole engine is one SQL file + stored procedures with no broker, no coordinator, no SDK-based orchestration in code.

It also makes the entire execution workflow history immutable and viewable by a self-reflection agent. On local/edge where processes die routinely (laptop sleeps, browser tab closes, network drops, edge worker suspends), an agent that has already made 20 expensive tool calls resumes at step 21 instead of re-paying for everything. You get this without writing checkpoint code or a state machine; the trace of completed steps is the agent's memory. I’m a fan of the pattern where the data itself captures the state in an idempotent sort of way.

earendil-works.github.io/absurd

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  • Software architecture
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