Pattern
Stateless worker with external memory
You might say: share-nothing worker
A fresh worker performs one bounded job, then stores any state needed later in durable services. A replacement worker can continue from those services. A coding-agent loop does this with a progress file and commits that the next run reads first.
- Ask
- What survives this worker, where is it stored, and can the next worker resume without local files?
Sources
- Adam Wiggins, The Twelve-Factor App: Processes, VI. Processes
Twelve-factor processes are stateless and share-nothing. Any data that needs to persist must be stored in a stateful backing service, typically a database.
- Matt Pocock, 11 Tips For AI Coding With Ralph Wiggum, 4. Track Ralph's Progress
AI agents are like super-smart experts who forget everything between tasks. Each new context window starts fresh. Without a progress file, Ralph must explore the entire repo to understand the current state.
- Matt Pocock, AI Coding Dictionary, Stateless
An agent is stateless across sessions by default: a new session starts empty, with no trace of prior ones.
- Matt Pocock, AI Coding Dictionary, Memory system
A system that attempts to make an agent stateful across sessions. Persists information into the environment during a session and reloads it into the context window at the start of future ones, so the agent carries continuity beyond the user clearing the session.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Stateless worker with external memory" (pattern-stateless-worker) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/software-factory/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal