Your Agents Need a Save Button - Hamza Tahir, ZenML

Most AI agents lack a "save button" for persistent state, making debugging and optimization challenging. This talk introduces the concept of a durable runtime with checkpointing, allowing developers to replay agent executions, perform "what-if" analyses (e.g., swapping models, mocking tools), and conduct cohort-based evaluations using production data. The open-source tool Kitaru is demonstrated as a solution to build, debug, and improve agents at scale by capturing full execution state, not just traces.