Agent engineering debate: when is a retry defensible after a timed-out non-idempotent write?
InformationLive493 · reddit · 2026-10-18
A Reddit discussion on agent engineering: an agent creating support tickets via a tool call times out before receiving a ticket ID. Since the ticket may already exist, a blind retry risks costly duplicates requiring human cleanup.
Setup: the API has no idempotency keys, but lets the agent attach a unique request marker and search for it afterward — though search results can lag behind writes. Under these constraints the author asks whether a failed lookup ever justifies an automatic retry, whether waiting longer alone is sufficient (it isn't unless the service guarantees a maximum search delay), and what evidence would make a retry defensible versus keeping the outcome marked as unknown until a matching ticket is found or a human resolves it.
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