I shipped an AI agent last year that looked perfect in every demo. Then it hit production traffic and started failing silently, no errors, no crashes, just empty responses and confused users.
The worst part? It took me three days to find out why.
Here's what I learned about building agents that don't fail quietly, and the exact patterns I now use to catch failures before they reach users.
Why Agents Fail in Ways Normal Apps Don't
Most developers know how to handle a crashed server or a failed database query. Those throw exceptions, light up Sentry, and get fixed fast.
