Why long-running AI agents break on HTTP and how Ably is fixing it

Ably CEO Matthew O'Riordan explains why HTTP breaks down for long-running AI agents that need to stay alive for hours, handle reconnections, and sync state across devices. The solution is a 'durable session' layer that covers presence, shared state, storage, and push notifications — going beyond simple pub/sub or streams. Ably's AI Transport product keeps the client-to-agent path on HTTP while moving the response path to a durable session, enabling drop-in integration with frameworks like Vercel AI SDK and TanStack without changing existing stack design patterns.