Uptime Is Not an Agent SLO
An agent endpoint returns HTTP 200 in 99.95% of requests. The service is “up.” Meanwhile, some successful responses skip retrieval, some tool calls exceed their budget, and a few write actions occur without the expected approval. Availability is healthy while the product is not. Traditional service-level indicators still matter. Agent systems add another layer: the path and outcome can fail…
The article highlights the importance of accurately defining an SLO for agent systems, as traditional service-level indicators may not capture the nuances of agent behavior. It emphasizes the need to split the "successful request" promise into distinct indicator families, including outcome, safety and policy, efficiency, and autonomy quality.
By tracking these separate indicators, a more comprehensive understanding of the agent's performance can be achieved, preventing the masking of severe events or the optimization of metrics that may reduce overall success. The article stresses that an SLO should be derived from product risk, user expectations, and observed baselines, rather than being copied from another system, and that policy violations should be treated as explicit release or incident conditions.
Brief written by urgent.news from Dev.to's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
