AI Agents: From Prototype to Production

Your AI agent demo killed it in the stakeholder meeting. The CEO is excited. The product manager is already writing the press release. There's just one small problem: that beautiful Jupyter notebook isn't going to survive first contact with real users.

The gap between "it works on my machine" and "it works for 10,000 users at 3am on a Saturday" is where most AI agent projects go to die. This guide will help you cross that gap without losing your sanity.

The Prototype-to-Production Gap

Let's be honest about what "prototype" usually means in AI agent development:

• Single-threaded execution (one request at a time)
• No error handling (if it fails, restart the notebook)
• API keys hardcoded in cells
• No logging (print statements don't count)
• Unlimited timeouts (the notebook just sits there)
• No cost tracking (surprise $500 OpenAI bills)

This is fine for demos. It's catastrophic for production.

The Production Checklist

Before your AI agent faces real users, you need to address these requirements. Miss any of them, and you'll be debugging in production (ask me how I know).

1. Isolated Execution Environments

Each agent run must be completely isolated. No shared state, no global variables, no "it worked because the previous request set up the context."

2. Retry Logic with Exponential Backoff

LLM APIs fail. Rate limits hit. Networks blip. Your agent needs to handle this gracefully, not crash and burn.

version: "1.0"
name: resilient-agent
description: "A resilient assistant with retry handling"
model: gemini/gemini-2.5-flash
system_prompt: |
  You are a helpful assistant.
retry_options:
  attempts: 3      # Max retries (1-10)
  max_delay: 30    # Max seconds between retries

With proper retry configuration, transient failures become non-events instead of pager alerts.

3. Timeout Handling

What happens when an agent takes too long? In a prototype, you wait. In production, you need defined behavior.

• •Request timeout: Maximum time for the entire run (prevents runaway costs)
• •Tool timeout: Maximum time for individual tool calls
• •Graceful degradation: Return partial results rather than nothing

4. Concurrency Control

When 100 users hit your agent simultaneously, what happens? Without concurrency control:

• →Rate limits hit immediately
• →Memory exhaustion
• →Unpredictable response times
• →Cost spikes

Production systems need per-agent concurrency limits, request queuing, and fair scheduling.

5. Observability (The Non-Negotiable)

If you can't see what your agent is doing, you can't debug it when things go wrong. And things will go wrong.

Production observability means:

• •Run history: Every execution logged with status, duration, and trigger source
• •Execution traces: Step-by-step breakdown of LLM calls, tool invocations, reasoning
• •Token tracking: Input and output tokens per run, per LLM call
• •Error categorization: Is it a tool failure? Rate limit? Timeout? Bad input?

Integration Patterns for Scale

How you trigger agents matters as much as how you build them. Here are the patterns that work at scale.

Async-First Architecture

The temptation is to build synchronous APIs: user sends request, waits for response. This works until:

• →Agent processing takes 30 seconds and your load balancer times out
• →Users refresh and create duplicate requests
• →Your web servers are blocked waiting on LLM responses

The solution: accept → queue → process → callback.

1. User submits request
   → Your API returns immediately with request_id
   
2. Request triggers agent via webhook/queue
   → Agent processes asynchronously
   
3. Agent completes
   → Results delivered via outbound connector
   → Webhook callback to your system
   → Or direct database write
   
4. User polls or receives push notification
   → Results displayed in UI

When Sync Makes Sense

Synchronous patterns do have their place:

• •Chat interfaces: Users expect immediate, streaming responses
• •Simple lookups: Quick queries that complete in <5 seconds
• •Blocking workflows: When the user cannot proceed without the result

For these, use WebSocket connections for streaming responses and set aggressive timeouts.

A Complete Production Example

Let's put it all together with a real-world example: a document processing pipeline that extracts data from uploaded invoices.

version: "1.0"
name: invoice-extractor
description: "Extracts structured data from invoices"
model: gemini/gemini-2.5-flash
system_prompt: |
  You are an invoice processing specialist. Extract structured
  data from invoice images and documents.
  
  Always extract: vendor name, invoice number, date, line items,
  subtotal, tax, and total. If a field is unclear, mark it as
  "unclear" rather than guessing.
tools:
  - documents.parse_pdf
  - documents.extract_text_from_image
  - validation.verify_totals
output_schema: invoice  # References schemas/invoice.json

version: "1.0"
name: invoice-pipeline
type: sequential
description: "Complete invoice processing: extract, validate, store"
agents:
  - invoice-extractor
  - invoice-validator
  - invoice-storer

This pipeline:

• 1.Triggers when a file is uploaded to S3
• 2.Extracts structured data with confidence scoring
• 3.Validates the extracted data (math checks, format validation)
• 4.Stores results and notifies downstream systems

Each step is traced, every token is counted, and failures are automatically retried with exponential backoff.

Deployment Strategy

Production deployments should be boring. No manual steps, no "deploy on Friday and pray."

Git-Based Workflow

# Make changes
vim agents/invoice-extractor.yaml

# Test locally with hot-reload
connic test

# Commit and push
git add .
git commit -m "Improve extraction accuracy for handwritten invoices"
git push origin main

# Deployment happens automatically
# Dashboard shows build progress and deployment status

Rollback in Seconds

Every deployment is versioned. If something goes wrong:

• →Click "rollback" in the dashboard
• →Previous version is live immediately
• →Debug the issue without production pressure

The Bottom Line

The gap between prototype and production is real, but it doesn't have to be painful. The key is using a platform that handles the production concerns for you:

• ✓Isolated execution environments (automatic)
• ✓Retry logic and timeout handling (configured, not coded)
• ✓Concurrency control (per-agent limits)
• ✓Full observability (built-in from day one)
• ✓Instant rollbacks (click a button)

Focus on what your agent does, not on keeping it running. That's the whole point.

Ready to take your agent to production? Start with the quickstart guide and check out our observability features to see what production-grade monitoring looks like.