Tekon Burns (@TekonBurns)

Anthropic just published an engineering guide on how to build always-on agents. The biggest misconception: an always-on agent does NOT run 24/7. It sleeps almost all day, wakes up for short runs, saves state, and goes back to sleep. The 5 core pieces I distilled: 1. Event Inbox Put a database table between webhooks and your agent. Acknowledge webhooks fast, run only one active worker per user so runs never collide, and batch rapid messages together. 2. Timers Keep timers in a separate table from the inbox. Split them into one-off follow-ups and recurring schedules. A background poller drops due timers into the inbox. 3. Lean Memory + Dreaming Only store what cannot be looked up again: user instructions, user notes, past messages, and task progress. Load a small index at wakeup, not every file. Run periodic dreaming passes to clean out stale facts. 4. Unattended Permissions Never put raw API keys inside the agent sandbox — inject them through an outside proxy. Use Deferred Tool Calls to pause risky actions for approval without blocking the worker. 5. Outbox Queue outgoing replies so your agent paces notifications instead of spamming users at 3 AM.

🚨Claude code users!! Your 5-hour and weekly limits will stretch much further. Anthropic published a new official documentation page for experimental Code Mode in Claude Code v2.1.323+. Instead of sequential tool calls, Claude writes JavaScript to run parallel tool calls in one step.